


The Word of Skill

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crazy Knights of Ren, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, I Steal Dead People's Poetry and Repurpose It For My Story, Jakku Has Culture And Don't You Mock It!, Kylo Is My Tormented Murder Son, Rey Fixes Things and People., Slow Burn, Space Opera, Words are powerful, space drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 55,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: When Kylo Ren kidnaps Rey from Ahch-to, he expects her to be a worthy rival and a pupil. He's already seen enough to know she's a girl who can match him in wits and in Force power.  But it's the other things Rey learned during her years of neglect on Jakku that will make all the difference; not only to Kylo but to the other inhabitants of the Finalizer, and perhaps the Galaxy itself.





	1. On Ahch-to

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onstraysod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/gifts).



> This is a gift for onstraysod. But it took on a life of its own, the characters had too much to say and wouldn't follow my directions, and as time ran out, I couldn't fulfil all the angles the prompt suggested. So I consider that I still owe you a story. One with more Han Solo in it, and more laughter. Because that would be a cool story to write.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one, anyway.
> 
> * * *  
> Writing this would not have been possible - and especially not at this speed - without the amazing generosity of my fanfiction writing group and the beta-readers who encouraged me and gave their time and advice so this could be a better story: Ohnoida, Viv, Darkling, Applesith, Mer, Mnemehoshiko, Ronrines, Cosette-giry, Syonixie, Incognitajones, and Briarlily. Apologies if I've missed anybody out!  
>  
> 
> * * *

Almost, almost he spoke, when she held out the lightsaber.

He took her fingers and closed them back around its hilt, put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and gave her a push to start her on the path back to the ship.

She trotted down a ways, thinking he would follow. But he didn’t, so she went back up to him. He hadn’t moved. Just stood there, all the misery of the world on his shoulders.

“Take it, it’s yours!” she insisted, holding it out again.

He did take it then. He flung it down, went to stamp on it. To crush it. Rey threw herself on the lightsaber to protect it, and he tossed her aside with a careless brush of the Force, barely flicking one hand to do it. Lying on the ground where she fell, she reached out her hand then, instinctively, and the lightsaber jumped out from under Luke’s heel where he was grinding it into the dirt. Straight into her hand.

“I guess it’s mine then,” she said, wondering if this was her first lesson.

Luke wouldn’t say. His face seemed full of warring emotions.

“You _are_ Luke, aren’t you?”

Silence.

“I don’t understand!” she said, gesturing around her. Meaning all of it: the bare, wind-scoured island, the endless seas of this lonely planet, the speechless man standing in front of her.

Luke ducked away from her questioning gaze and shook his head with a bitter laugh.

She hesitated a moment, and then reached into his mind as gently as she could. If that was a forbidden use of the Force, well, she was here to learn the rules.

Luke’s mind was like shattered glass. Some precious thing, hurled to its destruction, and frozen in the moment before the fragments could fly apart. She could read nothing, but then the fragments came together and for one instant he gave her a picture of a machine, a mindless thing of grinding gears and unstoppable motion, and herself, caught in its workings and torn apart. Blood everywhere, her face an endless scream, seeing the end and powerless to stop it. The bones of her hands and feet splayed out, becoming cogs in the machine.

 _They will destroy you._ His thought  came effortlessly into her head, full of anguished compassion. He spoke no word out loud, and yet his momentary presence, whole and focused, was like a thunderclap. The shattered thing remade for an instant, a pillar of power and resonance that shouted out to the whole galaxy. A second later he was gone, and the man in front of her was doubled over, screaming in pain, his hands over his head.

To speak, _to be,_ caused Luke unimaginable pain. Rey stood, hand clapped over her mouth, eyes like saucers. Pain like this was unbearable to watch. She approached him, trying to be gentle-handed, but he pushed her away. She understood, though her Force senses cringed  from her contact with him: If he should say one word, the power that lay coiled under his tongue would destroy him entirely. Something else waited to speak with his mouth.

A warning flared at the edges of Rey’s senses. Something far away seemed to shift and turn, to become aware of them. She felt its regard like a flash of heat passing over her. But there was no time to think of that now.

Trembling, she offered Luke the lightsaber again. In silence, he turned away.

She followed him to the top of the island. There, a cracked marble pavement lined with the stumps of pillars led to a vast absence, a smooth, spherical bite taken out of the peak. Once there had been a causeway here leading to — something. The Jedi Temple? It must have crowned the hill in magnificence. Now Luke led her to the gap between the last two pillars. Nothing beyond them but air. The sea rolled far below in lines of pewter.

Luke shrugged apologetically and trudged off. She followed him to a rough turf-roofed hut built into the stones of the hilltop. There was a curl of smoke coming from the top. Rey imagined a hearth, a fire, a warm meal. They would break bread together, and then it would all come out: Luke’s story, her story. She would ask for a place as his apprentice. They might haggle over the terms. Rey was used to haggling on Jakku, and could be as firm or as charming as the situation required. She even got around Unkar sometimes. He’d have recognised the determined little smile on her face as she followed Luke.

At the entrance to his hut, Luke turned, gave her a brief glare, flapped his hand to wave her away, and slammed the door in her face.

She stood a moment, stiff as wood. It was not just Luke’s silence that hurt, or his rejection of the lightsaber. The worst thing was what her raw new Force senses told her about him:  if Luke’s fractured self came together enough to say anything, the power might be more than either of them could bear.

She stared at the shut door and took one deep breath. Two. There was a sob waiting at the bottom of the third breath, so she didn’t draw that one until she’d gathered up the splinters of the endurance that had allowed her to survive on Jakku.

She counted on her fingers, making a word-smithing the way she used to do on Jakku to keep the pain at bay.

_One.  I don’t need a family. (All the stars of the sky their grave, or none)_

_Two. I don’t need friends.  (all the stars their field til their war is won)_

_Three.  I don’t need to be the Galaxy’s hero.  (One will rise, sure as the sun)_

_Four.  I don’t need a teacher…_

 But there she ran out of ideas and the rhyme was stupid. The truth was she’d lost Finn, she’d lost Han, and Luke had lost his mind entirely.

  _You’re so lonely._

 A voice out of nowhere. Husky and low, sounding almost sympathetic. She lifted her chin scornfully at the memory. She wasn’t _that_ desperate for sympathy.

 The memory had felt strangely present. As though he was actually there to murmur those words in her ear again.  

Well, what to do now? Go back down to the Falcon and look for sympathy from Chewie? Chewie, who had already enough grief with the loss of his longtime comrade Han?  And then what? Back to Leia, to add to her sorrows with news of her brother’s madness?

Rey walked back up to the marble causeway leading nowhere, sat between the last pair of pillars, and waited. She was good at waiting. Sooner or later her pain would become small enough to manage. Then she could decide what to do.

At nightfall Luke came up, wrapped in tattered blankets  and a waterproof sheet. There was a worn hollow of soil by one of the pillars. He made a shooing sound at her and waved her away. She saw that he slept there, and did not want her company.

Fine. She could understand that. On Jakku she slept alone in an ATAT because she didn’t want company either.

She walked down the long stairs to the Millennium Falcon. R2D2 saw her first, and his beeping and trilling were almost too fast for Rey to follow.  He was frantic to go up and see Luke.

“I think he’s mad. He won’t speak. I don’t think he’s going to teach me.”

 Chewie gave her a long stare, then smashed one huge hand angrily on the bulkhead.

 Rey lifted her hands. “I’m not giving up yet.”

That night she sat on the landing ramp of the Falcon, trying to reach out with her new Force senses. The night thrummed and prickled, filled with messages for her, if only she could attune herself to them. If she could block out the other strangenesses: the keen salt wind, the tireless roar of the waves on the rocky shore.

And there it was: dream visions rising over the island. The pillars grew, the marble pavement became a shining causeway. It led to a temple, and palaces and parades formed out of the clouds and dissolved, only to form again. Rey watched the peak above her waver and change. Somehow she knew that these were Luke’s dreams she was seeing.

Maybe it was her own dream, later that night, when she walked in the Temple precincts and reached out a hand to touch the carvings. _So this is the place,_ said a voice, low and breathy. Some shadowy figure stepped around a pillar and put a hand over hers. She woke suddenly still with the impression of its warmth, the large bones, how easily it enfolded her hand. She clenched her fist and tucked it under her arm for safety.

The next morning before dawn she went up to the top of the island, and saw a name written on the feet of the pillars, though she had to look at the curling script for a long time to understand what it said. Always a miracle to her, reading. She remembered a finger pointing to words, a voice. But who, _who_ had taught her to read?

“The Daylight Gate,” she read aloud.

Luke was awake already, still tucked into his hollow by the pillar and watching her with bright eyes. He laughed suddenly, like a child, and gestured towards the molten line of sunrise on the horizon. A moment later, the sun rose between the pillars, a great shout of light kindling the dark blue sky and sea, gold and green and red. White bird-creatures rose up in a storm of wings, crying. Rey lifted her hands and cried back, wordless in the face of colours she could not even name.

Great combers of air curled up from the sea, salt-laden, and she breathed them in, arms stretched wide, letting the cold draughts fill her. Something could come through this gate, something bright, she thought. But nothing happened. There was only a gulf of shining emptiness, and a long plunge to the rocky shore below, for one who cannot fly.

 Rey flapped her arms experimentally. But no, she could not fly. 

Luke came up in that silent way he had, smiling sadly.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful. Do you know beautiful? Do you understand?”

He put his hand tentatively on her cheek for an instant, then walked away.

 _Yes, beautiful,_ said a voice in her mind, soft as velvet. She turned quickly, suddenly sure there was somebody beside her on the clifftop. Nobody there but the wind.

 _Idiot,_ she told herself, and followed Luke away from the Daylight Gate. He walked faster, and finally went in his hut and shut the door in her face.

Over the following nights she tried sneak past Luke as he slept. Perhaps she might run through the pillars onto the dream-path and actually reach the Jedi Temple. But she could never catch him sleeping. As soon as she approached, he woke.

She dreamed too. Red-robed bird-headed people and their festivals, with the young prince walking through the crowds; their songs of adoration, his ascent of the podium, focus of their worship, and the betrayal on his face as he realised it was not a podium but an altar, and the stone knives were raised. It was Kylo’s face, scarred. At first the dream made her exultant. Serves him right, she thought.

“You’re afraid,” she said coldly, both in her dream and afterwards, when she woke. But there was little pleasure in seeing his face twist in fear as the knives went up. _Betrayed!_

She was betrayed too, stuck on this island with all her dead hopes. Rey got in the habit of going up to the cliff edge at sunrise to stand between the pillars and taste the new day. Then she’d go and find Luke, who would already be down in his hut cooking porridge. 

Even if he couldn’t speak, there must be ways he could teach her. Things he could show her. He’d see that she didn’t give in easily. If he threw rocks at her, fine, she’d use the Force to throw them back.

After three weeks though, she was pretty sure he was throwing them to make her go away.

 _Whatever the Jedi training was, somebody had to invent it. Somebody had to find it out first. And I’ll find it again myself,_ she repeated fiercely. The lightsaber leapt easily into her hand.

_“One for justice_

_Two for peace_

_Three for vengeance_

_Four for war!_ ” she cried, like a child playing Siths and Jedis.

Chewie, standing by, grunted that he didn’t think the one-handed twirl she’d mastered was an essential part of saber technique.

“Okay so stupid Kylo just did it to show off,” said Rey, panting. “But then he did _this_ and _this_ and _this!_ ”

Chewie had to admit that her next flurry of strikes looked pretty lethal.

“If Luke won’t teach me, I’ll just have to copy the fighting I _have_ seen. Imagine if I meet Kylo again and use his own moves on him!” Rey gave Chewie a feral grin and he replied with his own even toothier one.

Luke watched from a distance, and said nothing.

“Why won’t you help me?” she shouted another time, when Chewie was elsewhere and  Luke came closer.

Luke went even more still than usual, though his eyes flicked from side to side as though checking for enemies. Then he made a very small gesture with his thumb towards the Daylight Gate.

“What? There’s something through the Gate besides a thousand metre drop?”

Luke flinched. Rey felt the air bulge dangerously around her with an invisible force. She looked around quickly but there was nothing to see besides the rocks and grass of the high hillside. She looked back at Luke. His eyes were unfocused and he was backing away from her very carefully.

“It’s okay, don’t think about it. Don’t think it. Think of something else!” she said quickly. Luke let out a couple of deep breaths and the sense of pressure around Rey eased.

She went later to look over the drop beyond the Daylight Gate. The island simply ended there, as if cut off. The cliff looked artificially smooth. But it had clearly been that way a long time: small trees had worked their roots into cracks in the rock and grown down in long beards of green. If anything else had been here, it was not within any human lifetime.

 “I think the Jedi Temple was here once,” said Rey later, over dinner with Chewie. “And there’s still some connection. Luke pointed at the gateway to where it was. That must mean something.”

Chewie shrugged and gave a low whine.

“Something about it drove him mad. Or something about this place,” continued Rey.

Chewie hit the table impatiently and growled.

“Yeah, I know. But I’m sure if he could ‘just snap out of it,’ he would have done,” said Rey. “You asking him ‘why are you crazy?’ probably wasn’t the best approach, even if you are old friends.”

Chewie shot her a glare.

 _“Were_ old friends,” amended Rey. “But anyway, we can’t search a whole planet looking for clues. The answer’s here, I’m sure of it.”

Chewie sighed and held out the packet of Wookiee Snacks he was eating. The fur around his mouth was sprinkled with orange crumbs.

Rey shook her head. “You finish them. I’m full.”

Some nights she slept, not in the Millennium Falcon, where Chewie was becoming increasingly angry and weird, but in a cave she found.  She curled up there, a coal of resentment growing in her chest. Sometimes she wanted to scream. This was as bad as sleeping alone in her ATAT on Jakku, except now she hadn’t even the illusion that anyone wanted her.

On nights when Luke’s dreams of the Jedi temple did not invade her sleep, she had other dreams: dreams of endless grey corridors lit by unchanging light. Cramped, confined dreams, and a sense of someone other than herself pacing, pacing, angry and restless in that ugly place.

 _Why do I dream of him?_ She wondered even more at the little spark that woke in her with the knowledge that he was not dead. For this was knowledge, not dreams. Just like her dream of the island.

Sleeplessness drove her up to the Daylight Gate, hoping to be there when the Gate formed out of Luke’s dreams. She still had no luck sneaking past him, and he took to attacking her silently with a stick. A stupid stick, a bit of tree, not even straight. She’d seen ones like it washed up on the shore. They must come from somewhere green. The sea did something to them, made them dry and silvery.

She wouldn’t use her lightsaber against his stick. That wouldn’t be fair. But he beat her staff out of her hand with his damned stick every time.

It was no sort of training: his moves were too fast and subtle for her to follow.  Once it looked like he might lose, but then he flicked a rock at her head that stopped her in her tracks, blinded by the blood pouring from a cut in her scalp.

Maybe the lesson was that she should cheat?

The second time Luke spoke was when she decided her apprenticeship might be to follow him everywhere. She followed him to the shore, where he sat quietly on a rock dangling a line into the sea. Close up, the endless, restless water made her nervous, but she stayed. He gave her an encouraging smile. He could be kind sometimes. Sweetness in his eyes, seemingly without guile.

After a long time, he pulled up the line and there was a wriggling silver creature on it, as sleek and shiny as a good spaceship. The island was full of marvellous things like this — grass, flowers, shells, driftwood. None of them were her teachers, or maybe all of them were. Luke wouldn’t say, so she observed them all closely in case they mattered.

This thing, though, was so lively! Then Luke beat its head on the rock beside him, and it was still and dead. By the time Rey got over her shock, he was gutting it efficiently with a knife she didn’t know he carried. Wet globby stuff fell out.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, horrified. He flinched as though struck.

 _It’s the way of the world. We all do what we must,_ came Luke’s  voice in her head. The island seemed to shudder beneath her at his momentary presence, his speech. He cried out wordlessly in pain, then took the thing — fish, she understood now — and ran heavily up the path to his stone hut. Later he shared his meal with her, inviting her to sit by him on his doorstep. It tasted good, but Rey decided she preferred her food to come out of a sterile wrapper.

The third time Luke spoke was when Chewie and Rey helped Artoo make the difficult journey up the steps to meet him. It happened because  Luke had avoided the ship, his eyes filling with tears when he first caught sight of it parked by the shore. Other times Rey saw him look at it and laugh, or smile. Rey didn’t know why, for he kept his usual silence, both in his voice and in his mind. Whatever the reason,  he wouldn’t go down to it, and Artoo, who couldn’t climb up to meet him, was pitiful, trundling around beeping disconsolately and whirling his sensors around for any glimpse of Luke.

Maybe Rey’s decision was stupid. She’d had a sleepless week, seeing if she could out-wake Luke and get past his watch on the Daylight Gate. She was delirious with tiredness (and she still hadn’t caught him with his guard down). However it was, there came a day when she couldn’t stand Artoo’s misery any more.

“At least go down and talk to him! He’s desperate to see you. He does nothing but wait for you. It’s pathetic!” Rey told him. Luke laughed sadly and then bared his teeth. Rey reared back angrily, tired of his senselessness and silence, and went down to enlist Chewie’s help.

Which took some doing. Rey didn’t understand the Wookiee warrior code, but it was clear that Luke had broken faith with Chewie. Chewie had actively avoided Luke since they arrived. He lay around the ship with his fur salt-matted and unkempt, or paced the shoreline, snarling to himself.  Somehow Han’s death was Luke’s fault too. And while at first Chewie had been happy enough to join Rey in this adventure, as time wore on, something changed. He was Han’s copilot, not hers. The Millennium Falcon was more his ship than hers, and she began to feel as though he’d rather take it and follow his own path.  He’d look for a warrior’s death, she guessed.

Rey found Chewie lying motionless in the low surf, as he often did.

"Come on Chewie, help me carry Artoo up. You don’t have to talk to Luke. But I can’t carry Artoo on my own,” Rey insisted.

And so Artoo and Luke met outside Luke’s stone hut — he emerged to be confronted by the three of them, puffing and panting up the steps. Artoo whistled and squealed and trilled at Luke even before they put him down — a mixture of relief, delight and concern, as far as Rey could follow it.

Luke almost backed into his hut in alarm, then laughed nervously as he sometimes did. Then he was suddenly horribly _entirely_ _there,_ for one moment, lucid, pointing at Artoo with his mouth opened as though to scream.

All that came out was a croak. “You were a mistake! My father should never have...” Actual spoken words, the first Rey had heard him say aloud. Then he doubled over, retching. For a second, a pillar of silent, invisible power had formed around him, reaching to the stars. As it shattered, Luke screamed in pain.

Artoo went very still, pulling his sensors in. Then with great dignity he hooted something low and sad. Rey understood it. “I have served your family longer than you have been alive. I have watched and waited. My loyalty has been unshakeable. And you call me a _mistake._ I’m done with you.”

 Abruptly Artoo’s lights went out. He had powered himself off.

“Happy now?” snarled Chewie, glaring at Rey.

“How dare you blame me for this?” yelled Rey.  She turned on Luke furiously. “You are the pits, Luke! You gutless wonder! No wonder Ben turned against you.”

 As soon as it was said, she hated herself.

Luke’s jaw dropped open in shock.

Chewie roared his disapproval. He picked up Artoo and stomped off down the steps.

Distraught, Rey ran off the other way. She couldn’t face Artoo or Chewie, and she didn’t return to the Millennium Falcon that night, preferring to sleep on the beach.

She was tired, so tired. She’d barely slept in a week. Making herself a nest in the familiar sand, she cried like she had never done on Jakku since she was a child, and rarely even then.

*     *     *

Rey woke from a heavy slumber knowing something was terribly wrong. Nights on the island were pitch-black when the moons were down, like tonight.  But not now. Bright lights lanced through the sky, and she could hear the muffled scream of the Millennium Falcon’s engines. Sharp red rays stabbed down to where it was parked, and a brace of small fighters swept over the crest of the island, suddenly shockingly loud.

The Falcon was in no position to fight enemies flying above it, and even as Rey gathered her feet under her to run, she heard its engines rise to take-off pitch. She didn’t blame Chewie: he couldn’t wait for her and risk the Falcon’s destruction. He must have learned a thing or two from Han Solo: she saw him take the ship low and fast in a flat weaving course that almost cut the tops off the waves; waves that would throw off their enemies' sensors, if Chewie was lucky.

Two fighters dogged his trail. Not tie-fighters, but something else with the same solid curves as Luke’s fish. Fast and small. She wondered where their mother-ship was, because they didn’t look as though they had the range to reach distant Ahch-to on their own.

Suddenly the Falcon shot straight up, cracking into hyperspace while it was still a spark high in Ahch-to’s atmosphere. The shock-wave rolled across the sea towards Rey, who dived behind a rock to shelter from the sandstorm it caused. Even so she had to cover her eyes as it buffeted her around. Rocks and seaweed pelted her.

The other ships gave up the pursuit. They had no way of guessing where the Millennium Falcon might emerge from hyperspace. She hoped they’d assume she was on the Falcon. And Luke too: they were probably after him.

But no. Rey couldn’t see the enemy fighters, but the high mosquito whine of their engines was dropping down through the night, closer and closer. Of course they would search the island. If they were from the First Order, they must be looking for the Jedi Temple too.

Where was Luke? The thought of him, a crazy, frightened old man, in the hands of the First Order, made her anger at him disappear. She started to scramble straight up the rough hillside towards the top of the island.

The island seemed awake with a life of its own. In all the tumult of the sudden attack she’d forgotten she had other senses she could use. She reached out with them, and felt the Force vibrating all around her. The place was saturated with it.

Luke she felt right away, his familiar cool grey signature known to her. But what was this, circling around him like red and black birds of prey? One of those signatures was familiar: she had felt that wild, angry  trace before.

She pulled in more of the Force than she knew she could, igniting senses she didn’t know she had. Now her path seemed clear to her, even in the pitch-dark, and she  imagined herself  flowing over the dangerous terrain like water. The thought lent her new strength and she ran, powerful and surefooted, up to where at least six Force-users were holding Luke at bay.

Rey could just make them out with her eyes: six black figures, bizarrely armoured in rags and tatters and spikes. They seemed to be holding lightsabers, ones with mad, spitting blades like Kylo Ren’s. Luke was a paler shape outlined between the broken pillars of the Daylight Gate, the cliff at his back. He could retreat no further.

She wouldn’t let them take him down like gnaw-jaws worrying a stricken animal to death. She’d fight, if not for who Luke was now,  at least for the person he had once been. At the last possible moment she ignited her lightsaber and slashed at the backs of two of Luke’s attackers. They fell, turning towards her in belated defense, and she cut off their upraised arms on her backswing.

Then of course the others were turning, leaping in to attack her. Two on each side! Rey danced away, feeling the lightness of battle give wings to her feet. It had always been like this when she fought on Jakku, before she’d ever troubled herself with thoughts of the Dark side and the Light. There was simply the purity of action, of knowing the only way to go, and giving herself to the movement.

Their armour should have protected them, but it made them heavy. They did not know these tumbled stones as she did, and in the uncertain light of their whirling blades, she led them to where they would trip. She almost laughed as her blade took them off at the knees, slashed across their the arms they raised when they lost their balance.

It felt so good. She was doing something at last!

But not the right thing. Suddenly she became aware of another red blade at the peak of the hill, wielded by somebody who moved in impossibly long strides. And then a flash of green, and the sense of Luke’s presence, of his mind struggling to come together. To focus. To be.

She heard Luke cry out in pain. Then two lightsabers made a pattern of deadly beauty almost too fast to follow. The combatants were wraiths in the darkness, and all Rey could see was the red and the green flying around in dizzying circles. She left the dead and wounded behind her, and stormed up the hill, her lightsaber held in front of her.  No art or grace to her now, just sheer fury.

"You will NOT take him!” she snarled, lungs labouring as she ran.

Suddenly, frighteningly, the red blade was all too close. Kylo Ren had reached her in three wide strides. Most of his helmet was missing and the remains of the rest hung awkwardly off his shoulder. Luke must have got in a powerful strike to Kylo’s head.

Now it was Rey  who was off balance, making a series of awkward hops to avoid him.  He drove her back and she was aware that the others were behind her now, and gathering themselves for another attack.

Kylo Ren shouted over her shoulder to them. “Finish the old man. This one’s mine.”

“Like hell!” she said, baring her teeth. She could see his teeth flash in answer, and brought her blade round to that hated face. He parried, fluid as a serpent. She dodged, and was dimly aware of the other fighters passing her, heading for Luke.

She could feel Luke in the Force. He was still reaching for something. Suddenly there was a flash of light. For a moment the phantom temple was there, stretching out into the empty air. An impression of towers, flags, stairs, the causeway through the Daylight Gate. Luke stepped out into thin air. Then the vision winked out, and Luke was gone. Two Knights leapt after him, but for them there was no marble pavement. Their screams followed them down the cliff.

Kylo must have sensed what was happening behind him, for he paused in his attack. Holding his lightsaber to keep Rey at a distance, he circled around until he could look up to the empty hilltop too.

“It’s just you and me now,” said Rey. “Just the way you like it. Happy now?”

Her defiance was only skin-deep. It had shaken her to see the  skill and power that Kylo and Luke had used against each other. The little exercises she had invented for herself didn’t bear comparison. But if her bladework couldn’t unbalance him, words could. She didn’t need the Force to know that.

“This! One’s! For! Han!”  she yelled, jabbing at him on every word.

He sneered, and parried her jabs away.

“Life’s not a fairytale, you know,” she said, feinting left, then right, then jumping left. “It’s not a myth. You don’t get magical powers from killing your father. You just get…” she lunged forward and made a guess. “Sleepless nights!”

He flinched. She’d got him. “There are no magical bargains. You’re not some legend, stealing power by the murder of his father. And when Han died, he was still everything you’ll never be!”

Kylo swung wildly at her now. Technique gone all to the four winds. Rey laughed and met his blows with strength she didn’t know she had.

But he had his own attack. “You learn anything while you were here?  Enjoy sitting in your cave by yourself, staring into space? You seem pretty angry about it!”

How did he know? Rey shook her head. It was true. She _was_ angry.

“What a let-down!” he mocked.

“Shut up and fight. You’re not even trying,” she said. She had the feeling he was just fending her off. Probably trying to goad her into an unwise attack. Well, Luke had taught her one thing. She pretended to stumble, swiped a rock into her free fist, and sent it flying at Kylo’s head. He let out an angry yell.

“Luke cheats,” she said smugly. “And so do I.”

“Aaaand…..So do I,” he said, recovering quickly. In fact he sounded amused. She backed up for a moment, suddenly horribly certain that she’d been distracted when she should have been paying attention to —

She sensed movement behind her. Something stung her neck and a moment later a strange taste flooded her mouth. Sleep came like a wave, drowning her, and she had no defence. She turned through air that seemed suddenly thick. A man rose from behind a nearby rock, holding some kind of blowpipe. He must have snuck up while she was fighting.

“I didn’t come without backup,” said Kylo. “That’s something I’ve got and you haven’t.”

There was a little light now. Enough to see Kylo. He was standing, lightsaber lowered, watching her intently. His eyes wide with hopes she didn’t want to guess.

She let her lightsaber drop out of suddenly nerveless hands.

“Now I have you,” said Kylo, before the unnatural waves dragged her down.

  



	2. Back to the Finalizer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a long trip back to the Finalizer, and Kylo has time to observe the girl he's kidnapped. 
> 
> * * *

 

It couldn’t be counted a total victory. Not  with Luke’s unexplained disappearance and  the Jedi temple only partially revealed. Not to mention  the Knights of Ren being almost annihilated by a desert rat with a lightsaber. 

_ This _ lightsaber,  he thought. A rare grin broke out over his face,  and he felt his cheeks crease against the unforgiving planes of his helmet. He ignited the lightsaber for a moment just to see its pure blue blade, so smooth and quiet. There was no space to try it out on this ship, so all he could do was admire it. He smiled again, flicked it off  and slid the hilt back into his belt.

Not a victory, and yet… _ and  yet!  _  There was much to celebrate! At least Luke was gone, so  _ that _ threat  was eliminated. They’d found the site of the Jedi Temple, and with Ahch-to empty once again, they could take their time finding out what had happened to it, and searching for what else might remain.

And he was bringing Rey to his master,  just as he’d been commanded. The Supreme Leader would be pleased.

Kylo Ren stood watching Ahch-to drop away beneath his ship, the green islands fading into the blue haze. He’d be back. He’d find what secrets it held. Once he’d delivered the girl.

He took a deep breath and reached up to grip the sides of the viewport frame, stretching. His shirt snagged on the edges of his bacta-patches and the healing flesh underneath stung.  He’d taken one or two cuts in the fight on the peak.

Not bad, though. Not bad. He’d made a good showing against Luke, and he hadn’t allowed the girl to get under his skin this time. She was still no match for him when he was focused.

The stars stretched and blurred, and suddenly they were in hyperspace. The pilot had said It would take a couple of weeks to return to the Finalizer. Ahch-to was indeed distant, a lovely jewel in the lost reaches of space. Kylo hoped he could explore it slowly and alone. One day soon.

The girl, though. He’d better go check on her.

It was a short walk to the medbay unit where she lay, watched at all times by a stormtrooper and a medical droid that monitored the levels of Tranqarest keeping her unconscious. Snoke had warned him to take no chances this time, and Kylo agreed.

“How’s our sleeping beauty?” he asked the trooper.

“Asleep, sir.”

Kylo dismissed the trooper and sat on the spare bunk opposite the girl . Snoke would want her undamaged. He looked at her closely: she seemed relatively unharmed. She sighed and turned onto her side as though merely asleep. The medical droid quivered when she did so, and extended a probe into the soft skin of her neck to check her drug levels. The sight of the needle against her skin disturbed him, for some reason. 

The probe left a mark. Impulsively, he worked off one of his gauntlets, stretched out his hand and placed a finger over the little dent. He could feel her pulse beating softly against his fingertip. It made him smile again. She was his little trapped bird, his sand-sparrow, barely able to flutter her wings against his grasp. 

He stood and stretched again, interlacing his fingers and turning his palms outwards until he felt his muscles pulling from his hands to his shoulders, easing out the cramps from wielding the lightsaber so forcefully.

He left Rey, called in the guard, and walked to his own rooms feeling buoyed up by a sense of triumph.

*    *     *

As the journey back to the Finalizer continued, Kylo found he did not miss his slain Knights as much as he would have expected. Four were dead, and the ship felt roomier, emptied of their Force signatures. They had always carried with them a jangling discord, and Kylo breathed more freely without having that tugging at the edge of his awareness. Even without his Force senses, he’d found those particular Knights annoying, with their constant showing off and bickering. Being their leader was an honour he did not enjoy. 

They lied to cause trouble and discredit each other in front of Snoke, and sometimes Kylo had had the unpleasant task of using the Force to find out the truth. Their minds were truly dark, full of an enjoyment of others’ pain that Kylo still found disgusting. They could never finish a mission without inflicting some unnecessary cruelty. Kylo didn’t miss Gor’el’s gloating stories about people he’d hurt, nor Tatacho’s ugly “Haw-haw-HOH!” laugh at the end of those stories.

The remaining two, Talks-to-Ghosts and Slasheye, stayed out of everyone’s way. That was normal for them: they were recluses, usually too overwhelmed by the struggle with their wild Force powers to want company. Several times Snoke had been on the verge of terminating them. Privately Kylo thought they might do better without the threat of extinction fraying their nerves all the time.

The ship was so quiet. Nobody except the pilot dared to address him. Bored, he got in the habit of looking in on Rey every day. At first it was to savour his triumph: she was his helpless captive. The  way she’d beaten him before had been so humiliating. Now she was laid low. 

_Who do you think you are, Rey?_ _Did you think you could defeat me, with all the power of the Supreme Leader  and the First Order at my shoulders?_

A formidable will hid  behind that girlish face, although her eyelashes made innocent curves across her cheeks. He would lean closer, trying to imagine those eyes opening and flashing defiance at him.  _ Much good will it do you, _ he thought. 

Had he thought she was beautiful, the first time he saw her?  The texture of her skin had fascinated him, the way the desert sun had dusted it with freckles, flushed it with colour. Then he’d looked into her thoughts and seen loneliness that he recognised, for he knew loneliness very well. He saw her strange dreams of the island, and they intrigued him. But then her recent memories of Han had been a shock.  How quickly she and Han had become friends! How easy they were with each other!  There was no disappointment, no distrust in Han’s eyes when he looked at Rey.

After Starkiller Base he’d had plenty of time to think about her while he healed up, floating in his bactatank. He wanted revenge. Where was she? The answer came to him of its own accord; he began to get flashes, visions  he could not explain. It was as though she had infected him with her island dream, because he dreamed of it too. Only now Rey was on that island. Sometimes it was as though he was standing beside her for a moment as she went about her day, following Luke around, or brooding alone at night.

_ Still lonely, are you? Serves you right,  _ he thought.  _ I hate you,  _ he thought, and waited eagerly for the next flash of vision to come, hours or days later. Sometimes they were just fragments: curtains of rain sweeping the wide sea, the rising sun touching the tough island grass with gold, Rey’s hand tracing the veins of the rocks or holding a seashell. 

It gave him a shock seeing Luke again in these visions. He had aged, and his movements were heavy. He’d still seemed young when Kylo saw him last. Still forceful.  _  Of course he’s older,  _  he told himself. 

That better not be pity, that twisting feeling in his gut. Snoke would have some words to say about that.

In Kylo’s visions, Luke was always silent. He threw rocks at Rey, which gave Kylo some bitter satisfaction.

When Kylo was healed, he had told Snoke about the visions. 

“Ah, but this is the key! We can find them both through this connection!” Snoke had said. “Let us meditate together.” They did, for hours, over many days. Finally Kylo caught a glimpse of the island, only now Snoke was sharing his consciousness. Kylo felt him do something with the Force. Triangulating, like a predator fixing on its prey.

“I know where that is,” Snoke said afterwards. “We’ve found her. And Luke. I knew you were something special, Kylo Ren. I was right to believe in you.” His colourless eyes glowed with approval.

Kylo left that meeting with an extra spring in his step.

Now as he watched Rey in the quiet of the medbay, he would fall into a meditative state. No dreams of the island now. Instead, he began to sense her Force signature. He tried to think what it reminded him of. It was like a low note, clear and thrilling. At last he remembered a scene from his childhood, travelling with his father. He could not remember where exactly - perhaps Mandalore, but not in one of their cities. There had been high towers and brass instruments raised to welcome the day with sonorous notes, and deep bells struck to announce the sun. Like a call to action. 

A call to action, he thought, when the memory came to him. Well, he was Kylo Ren and he would do great deeds, now that his enemies had been brought down. Snoke had always promised him that.

The image of Han falling crossed his mind, a shadow that made him flinch. He mustn’t think about that. Mustn’t probe at the ragged gap that left in his soul. That emptiness must be necessary, he thought. A space where his strength could take root and grow. 

Snoke hadn’t said how long that would take.

He looked over at Rey again. Her profile was so sharp. Determined jaw, straight nose. Skin a little weathered, lips chapped. She’d been living like a rat in some hole, he imagined, when she wasn’t on the Millennium Falcon. Her hair made a brown straggle across the pillow. It needed washing. He wondered why she had worn it in that awkward triple-bun style.

If she was a sleeping beauty, she was a pretty unkempt one.

But ah! The Force in her! Even asleep he could sense it: that thrilling note, that pure line like the horizon just before dawn, the light and the dark utterly divided.

Beautiful. Surely he could be allowed to have one beautiful thing in his life?

 

  *      *       *



Home sweet home. Miles of corridors and identical cell-like rooms, everything as colourless as a dead planet. Every surface coldly echoing the strike of Kylo’s boots as he strode to his room. White, grey, black. The colours of purity. The sameness of the walls was punctuated by occasional signs. “Have you checked your CLARITY?” said one. “Is your FOCUS where it SHOULD be?” said another. 

Kylo’s room was a testament to First Order values. Shining black floor, hard grey walls, black, blocky furniture. The closest thing to an ornament was Vader’s burnt helmet on its plinth. When Kylo’s rage and misery threatened to overwhelm him,  the chill darkness of his room was like cold water on a burn.

Rage and misery were no strangers to Kylo. Snoke’s promises were so great, yet they were always just out of reach, and it was often some failure of Kylo’s that kept them there. Some lack of skill, or even worse, some flaw in his essential being. 

The only thing worse than his failures were other people’s failures. When Kylo couldn’t sleep, he prowled the corridors of the Finalizer looking for evidence of slackness. Why did people have such trouble grasping Snoke’s vision for the Galaxy, he wondered.  They followed orders, but that was all they did: deep down, they didn’t  believe in  the glorious future Snoke  had in store for them.  

But today was different. There was a spring in Kylo’s step as he approached his room.  As soon as he got in, he bounded over to his personal comms  unit and keyed in the code for Snoke. 

For once, Snoke’s image appeared immediately. He stared at Kylo with his unreadable eyes.  Kylo bowed deeply and made to take his mask off. Snoke gestured for him to remain as he was.

“I see you well enough.”

“Supreme Leader. I have news. Whether it is good or bad, I believe we have learned something useful,” he began formally.

“Come to the great hall and tell me. General Hux should hear it too, and we can discuss what to do next.”

The great hall was not far from Kylo’s room, which was in the executive level of the Finalizer. Hux entered a moment later, and they waited together for Snoke’s hologram to appear. 

“Find what you were looking for?” asked Hux, staring straight ahead of him as though speaking to an empty room.

“Yes,” said Kylo shortly.

Snoke’s image flickered to life. He leaned down to observe them with interest. Kylo told him about Ahch-to and the mysterious way Luke seemed to have called the Jedi Temple into existence for a moment before vanishing. “We thought Rey had got away when the Millennium Falcon beat our pursuit ships into hyperspace, but  she wasn’t on board. She came to join Luke’s fight against us, and Talks-to-Ghosts got her with a blowgun dart while she was duelling with me.”

Snoke gave him a crooked smile. “You’re quick to give credit. Talks-to-Ghosts wouldn’t have done the same for you.”

“No, Supreme Leader. Maybe not,” replied Kylo, smarting. It was typical of Snoke to ignore his achievements and pick on one little detail that displeased him: in this case, Kylo’s praise for his Knight’s teamwork in catching Rey. Snoke despised teamwork. 

“How did the girl duel?” asked Snoke, thankfully moving on to another topic.

“She seemed more aware of the Force, Supreme Leader. She has opened her senses to it further, and it helps her move effectively: in this case, over rough terrain in the dark. She doesn’t appear to have mastered any formal lightsaber techniques. Or at least, I didn’t see any,” Kylo said. “She uses the Force to amplify her streetfighting skills, which are rather formidable. She may have been fighting that way for years on Jakku, without being aware of it.”

“A detailed analysis. Thank you,” said Snoke. Kylo glowed with pride.

“I have her lightsaber — Vader’s lightsaber,” he said. He was wearing it looped ostentatiously into a silver belt.

“If I may interrupt,” said Hux. Meaning he was going to anyway, thought Kylo bitterly. Hux always found some way to steal Snoke’s attention. “Now we have the problem of containing this girl who seems to escape locked and guarded cells with ease. Since she’s actually joined the Resistance, I hardly need tell you how little I want her on board my ship.”

“How strong is the Light in her, Kylo?” asked Snoke. 

“She has kept to the Light, but I didn’t find her to be a naturally peaceful person,” said Kylo uneasily. Hux had a point. “She’s been drugged since we captured her, and I haven’t talked to her..”

“You’ve interrogated her before. Tell me, is she a moral person?”

“Moral?” asked Kylo. He could argue ethics all day to justify the First Order’s actions, but that was not what Snoke meant. He meant the iron in Rey’s soul.

“Yes,” he said.

“Very well. Hux, you have those hostages on board. Show her one of the families and give her a clear idea of how they’ll suffer if she attempts to escape, or damage anything, or harm any of your troops.”

Hux nodded smartly, clearly liking the idea. “But I’d still like to put a kill collar around her throat, just to be certain.” 

“Very well, you may,” said Snoke. “Very wise.”

Kylo gulped. The kill collar would take off her head in one slice. Eyes flying open to stare at him accusingly in the moment the light died out of them. Sights like that haunted his nightmares enough already.

“You can’t trigger that thing without my approval,” said Kylo. 

“It’s my ship, Ren. You were worse than useless at protecting Starkiller Base. Why should I trust you to do any better with the Finalizer?”

“Stop it, both of you. Ren gets final say on her execution, General. The girl is valuable.”

“Why?” asked Hux. But Snoke was annoyed now, his long fingers drumming on the edge of his throne. His rages were unpredictable. He turned to Kylo as though Hux had ceased to exist.

“Ren, we need to bring her over to the Dark Side. From what you were saying, she’s had a fairly monotonous life until recently. She may change her alignment, with enough exposure to new things, new ideas. Work on that until I am able to see her myself.” Snoke switched himself off the holoimager without explaining himself further. 

Hux gave Kylo an exasperated glance, as if to say “Now what?” Against his will, Kylo found himself almost agreeing. It was typical of Snoke to give  no explanation of where he  was, or when they could expect him, or what was keeping him away.

_ But still, I’ve got the girl, _ Kylo said to himself, squaring his shoulders. He turned and walked beside Hux out of the echoing chamber with a jauntiness to his stride that Hux could see even under all his layered costume.

“Nice to see somebody’s happy,” he said sourly. “Got the wonder girl all to yourself now, have you?”

It was uncanny how Hux didn’t need the Force to read people’s minds, Kylo thought. “The girl will be a powerful weapon for our side,” he said firmly. “You’ll see.”

“Powerful weapon, sure,” said Hux skeptically. “Like you. Hey, maybe the Supreme Leader will even let you keep her.”

“You little shit,” muttered Kylo under his breath. His helmet’s vocoder turned it into a meaningless  noise.

Hux cocked his head. “Something to say to me, Ren?”

Kylo clenched his fists and lengthened his stride to leave Hux behind, before he could suck any more goodness out of Kylo’s  day.


	3. Welcome to the Finalizer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets a cold welcome from Hux on the Finalizer. 
> 
> * * *

Rey woke to find herself once again strapped in a chair, shackled at the wrists and ankles. The room was grey, shiny and poorly lit. Not a speck of dirt anywhere, yet the smell of dried blood was unmistakeable.

There was something around her neck. She stretched and twisted, trying to loosen it, but it remained:  something hard and heavy, probably metal.

A spidery droid stepped out of the shadows, holding out a small holopad. 

“Observe, please,” it said in a clipped voice. 

The holopad lit up, showing a pale, sour-faced man in a black uniform. 

“My name is General Hux,” said the man. “And you are on my ship, the Finalizer. I hear you’ve joined the Resistance since we last saw you, so I expect you’ll be looking for ways to make our lives difficult. So I will tell you a few things before you start.

“First, you will notice you are wearing a kill-collar. It will decapitate you instantly if it is triggered. One of the things that will trigger it is you leaving the Finalizer. Another thing that will trigger it is me pressing this button.” The General held a small silver cylinder into the imager, and flipped open the top of it so Rey could see the button that activated it. He paused to see her reaction. She tried to keep completely still. The collar around her neck seemed suddenly much heavier, and a bead of sweat trickled maddeningly between her shoulderblades.

“So don’t do anything to annoy us. Me in particular. However, since the Supreme Leader has no use for your dead body that I’m aware of, I thought I’d arrange another way to ensure your good behaviour while you’re on board,” Hux continued.

He stepped away from the imager, and Rey could see a group of civilians huddled behind him. Judging by the similarity of  features, they were related to each other: deep brown skin, wide, generous mouths. They seemed frightened; their eyes followed Hux as though his slightest gesture might spell life or death for them.

“Meet the Kezedar family,” said Hux from offscreen. “They’ve come to the Finalizer, as families sometimes do, when they’ve come on better times and want to undo some decisions they’ve come to regret. The Kezedars managed to pull some strings. Now here they are, looking for a son they believe we have aboard. Maybe FN-2187. Maybe somebody just like him. 

“They’re a rather sad lot. Look how many children they have. Some of these people just keep breeding, hoping to replace the ones they gave away. Senseless.” He paused and leaned suddenly into the imager so his face was close to Rey’s. “Do  _ you  _ think children are replaceable, once you’ve lost them?”

Rey swallowed and said nothing.

“Anyway, here they are,” the General continued, leaning back. “They could be your traitor friend’s parents.”

Their faces had the same strongly sculpted curves, the same rich dark skin as Finn. Her brave friend, who’d lived here so long and been so alone.

“FN-2187’s family, or not. It doesn’t matter,” continued Hux. “What I want you to know is this: anything you do to any of my people, I will do to them.  You hurt one of my soldiers, I’ll hurt one of them. You kill one of my troops, one of them dies.”

Hux leaned back into the imager to favour Rey with a humourless smile. “I’ll let the parents choose who gets the punishment, and when there are no more children, I will ask them to execute each other. That’s only fair, isn’t it?” His eyes hardened, and he stepped out of view again.

The family on the holopad turned towards Rey nervously, except for the eldest child, a girl. She kept her face hidden against her mother’s shoulder.

“Turn to the imager now,” said Hux. The girl turned. Rey could see a diagonal scar across her face. It was hugely disfiguring. It wasn’t clear if she could see out of one eye.

“That’s a nasty scar you gave Kylo. We made it easy for this family and chose the first one ourselves,” said Hux. “Eldest first. Now, if you kill or hurt any of my people, we’ll get these poor parents to decide which of their children can suffer next.”

Rey tried to keep her face expressionless. “Give that child proper medical treatment!” she said, as steadily as she could.

“You don’t give the orders here, my dear,” said Hux, and the holopad snapped off. Rey clenched her fists.

Well. She took a deep breath and let it out in a gust, trying to focus. She should expect see Kylo Ren soon. No doubt he’d ask her what she knew about the First Jedi Temple and how Luke had disappeared. He would probably try to rifle through her thoughts again, like a dirty-handed thief.

Deep breaths. 

In,  _ one two three four.  _

Out,  _ one two three four.  _

_ One for courage, two for life…. _

Since nobody had taught her how Jedis meditated, this was the best she could do.

It was some consolation that she could not betray Luke’s secrets, no matter what Kylo did to her. Luke had called the dream temple into existence,  stepped into it and vanished. She had no idea how.

Indeed it wasn’t long before the door opened and Kylo Ren, masked and cloaked, stood in the doorway looking at her. She had forgotten how large he was. He completely filled the doorframe and as he stepped into the room it suddenly felt too small. She tried not to flinch and resumed her slow, steadying breaths.  _ I’m not just a helpless little mouse caught in a trap. Even tiny creatures can bite.  _ Han wouldn’t want her to show any fear towards his killer.

“New helmet,” she said. 

“New helmet,” he agreed. 

“How many of those stupid things have you got?”

“Enough.” His voice was neutral, gravelly because of the vocoder.

“Is it supposed to intimidate me? You look like an insect.”

“Try to imagine how little I care what you think.” He folded his arms and leaned against one of the walls, looking down on her. 

“Or like something that crawled out from under a rock, anyway,” she continued. “How’s your face? Ashamed to show me that cut I gave you?”

“Shut up,” he said, and she thought she could hear irritation in his voice, though it was difficult to tell through the helmet’s vocoder. “I take it you’ve heard General Hux’s little speech. What I want to know is this: Do you want to spend your time chained up like an animal, or do you want to be treated as our guest?”

“Guest? I’m your prisoner. Don’t try and pretty it up with a different name.”

“Oh don’t be so stupid. You could have your own room and eat normal meals and walk around like anybody else here, you know! You understand that was what the General was offering, right?”

“He didn’t say anything of the sort!” 

Kylo pushed himself away from the wall and leaned over her so his hands gripped on either side of her headrest. His mask was frighteningly close. She stared unblinkingly into the blank eyepieces as though she could see through them.

“It all depends on your attitude! Do you want to see that family hurt?” he demanded..

“Of course not!”

“Then you just have to behave!” He reached over and snapped off the restraints. “Come on, I’m not going to stand around talking to you here all day. We can go somewhere and sit down like civilised people.”

“Sorry, I had no idea I was tiring you out so much,” Rey said. 

There was a noise like a sigh through his helmet’s vocoder.

“Get up,” he said. He turned, stalked over to the door and waited by it while Rey climbed out of the interrogation chair. 

She rubbed her wrists and and touched the collar on her neck very gingerly.  “ Yeah right . Free as a bird.”

“Follow me.”

She followed him out. The corridor outside could have been the same as the one on Starkiller Base. The same grey architecture, the same repetition of doors and panels.

“You didn’t ask me to promise,” Rey said after a minute of trotting behind Kylo’s long strides.

“Promise?” asked Kylo.

“Promise I wouldn’t attack you or something.”

He grunted something unintelligible, and said “You wouldn’t keep a promise to me anyway. But I know you. You wouldn’t break a promise to yourself.”

She didn’t have any comeback to that. 

They rounded  a corner and nearly knocked over a man coming the other way. His black uniform was not like the stormtroopers they’d passed before, and Rey knew his face. He was the man in the hologram, General Hux. In real life, his hair was red. His glance flicked over her, up and down.

“I didn’t expect to meet you in person so soon,” he said in a silky voice. “Running loose already I see.” He pulled the silver cylinder out of his pocket. “Unlike Ren here, I don’t believe so much in your  _ morality. _ ” He gave the word a peculiar emphasis, and Kylo twitched. Hux turned to him.

“I think you’ll find your desert flower isn’t so pure. She will have sold herself a hundred times for something to eat, and like all these insurgent scum, she’ll sell herself a hundred times more to escape her jailers. That’s your Rebel morality.”

“That’s none of your business, and you know it,” said Ren, his voice even more of a growl than usual through the helmet.

“Make sure she doesn’t cost us the ship this time.” Hux tossed the silver cylinder and caught it casually in one hand. He walked off, smiling slightly.

“What was all that about?” asked Rey.

“Nothing.”

“Sell myself? What does he think I….?”

She saw his shoulders stiffen slightly. 

“You know. Sex. For money, if they even  _ have _ that on Jakku.” He was biting out the words.

“Seems reasonable,” said Rey. “If you’re hungry and you have something people will pay for, why wouldn’t you?” 

“There’s this little thing called  _ pride _ . And not wanting to bring shame on your family.”

“I haven’t got family, so I’m all clear on that count. Plus I’ve never killed any of them so hey, I’m good as gold,” she said. 

She couldn’t detect any reaction  from Kylo with her five normal senses. But to her Force senses, it was another matter. The corridor seemed to jump and flex violently under her feet. A detonation. She closed her eyes, and opened them again quickly. In reality, the corridor remained its normal grey self, and Kylo’s retreating shoulders gave nothing away. 

She hadn’t done that particular transaction on Jakku herself. There was something not quite straightforward about it. People came away from their encounters better fed, but sometimes also confused. A little flattened, somehow. She didn’t know why. Once when she found a fortune in receiver coils she’d considered paying a young freighter mechanic for sex so she could see what it was all about. It’d put her in a better position to judge its value in the future. But he’d gone offplanet before she could act on her impulse.

Kylo had slowed slightly, half turning so he could observe her face as they walked.

“Hey, get out of my head!” she said suddenly. “What are you rummaging around for? It’s got nothing to do with you!”

“Here’s your room,” he snarled, shoving open a door marked with a red tab. They were in a short corridor where the doors were spaced far apart, suggesting the rooms behind them were larger than what Rey had seen so far. She stepped in past Kylo, who was holding his arm out in a gesture of mock welcome.

“It’s lovely. I’m sure I’ll be very happy here,” she said, running her eyes over the hard grey walls and squat grey furniture. 

“I’ve seen the security footage from Jakku. You lived in a wreck.”

“But it was  _ my _ wreck!”

“I bet you’ve never even had running water before.”

“Ooh, look, it even has carpet, and in my favourite shade of grey too! I’ll just roll around on the floor and enjoy the luxury, shall I?” 

“Let me put my cards on the table, since you seem to be too unutterably stupid to figure things out for yourself. You are a Force user, which in this age of the Galaxy, is a rare thing. As such, you have a value  — to the First Order, and to everyone else. But the First Order won’t abandon you to rot on deserts and islands in the middle of nowhere. You’ll see that we have a great deal more to offer than you’ve had so far in your life.”

“When does the interrogation start?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Kylo. He stopped by the door. “You’re pretty aggressive...It makes me wonder, just how strong is your commitment to the Light side?” He shut the door quickly behind him. Rey hurled herself at the door, pounded on it and yanked at the handle. It flew open with such force that she tumbled backwards onto the floor. Kylo stepped back into the doorway and stood with one hand on either side of the  door frame, leaning in to look at her.

“Yes?”

Rey glared at him. Even with his helmet on she could tell he was laughing. 

“I forgot to mention your escorts here. They will be waiting to accompany you if you decide to stretch your legs at any time,” Kylo said. Craning around him, Rey could see at least three stormtroopers standing at attention in the corridor outside. “They will let you know which areas of the Finalizer are off limits.” 

“No thanks.”

“I’ll just leave you to enjoy rolling around on your carpet, then.” He shut the door with a smart click.

_ One. Two. Three. Four _ ….Rey counted through gritted teeth until she was sure he was really gone. Then she got up and ran to the other doors in the room. There was a room with a low bed.. Grey blankets, of course. A pair of black pants and a black tunic lay folded on a chair. Rey went back out into the main room. Another door led to a refresher. This had an actual water shower, something Rey had only experienced briefly at the Resistance base on D’Qar.

She turned it on and put her wrists under it, fingering the water and watching it pool in her hands and slip through her fingers. Then, stripping off her ragged boots, she poked in her feet, spreading her toes and dabbling them on the wet floor. Then, greatly daring, she leaned in and put her head under. She covered her nose and mouth at first, then gingerly allowed the water to flow over her face. Her hair flopped down in a long waterfall, blinding her, and she swung her head to feel the wet weight of it. 

Finally she took off all her clothes and stepped entirely into the shower. The medical droids had done their best to keep her clean, but after weeks of journeying  in a drug-induced sleep her skin was covered in a sticky film. She washed it off the way she’d seen people do in holovid adverts, making a lather from one of the bottles provided and smoothing it over her skin. 

The people in the shower gel adverts always had a special kind of smile. Now Rey knew why. It took a long time before she could bear to turn the shower off. As she squeezed the water out of her hair, her smile died. There would be a price to pay for all this luxury.

She stirred her clothes with one toe. The beautifully-made outfit Leia had given Rey with her own hands and furthermore, the smartest, cleanest clothes Rey had ever owned. Now they reeked unbearably. She put them in the refresher’s basin and scrubbed them under water.  They almost unravelled. Apparently the fabric was mostly held together by dirt and sweat.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she took her clothes out into the main room and hung them to dry over a chair. She went into the bedroom and picked up the tunic. The fabric was stiff. New. Clean. She hesitated, then pulled it over her head in one quick movement.

Dressed, she went back to the main room to explore. There wasn’t much to see. A table, some chairs, both hard and soft. She bounced on the soft chair. There was a window. Nothing to see except stars. Not the flickering, blazing stars of the Jakku desert, the thousand-named treasure-chest of Ri’ia. These were the stars of the Finalizer, hard and flat. 

Rey turned away from the window.

_ One, two, three, four. _ She paced the room.  _ One, two, three, four. _ She paced back. Four paces each way. Never any more, never any less. She had seen this dream. It hadn’t been hers. But now it had become her reality.


	4. The Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Force bond with Rey has unexpected benefits for Kylo. He's pretty certain he's never going to discuss them with his mentor Snoke.
> 
> * * *

It wasn’t a long walk from Rey’s room to Kylo’s. The crew —  mostly officers, at this level of the Finalizer — made themselves small against the sides of the corridors when they saw him coming. The wide swing of his arms and the jaunty set of his shoulders could mean anything, and in any case, good news for Ren was generally bad for everyone else.

Once in his room, Kylo took off his helmet, plunged his hands into his hair and scratched his scalp luxuriously. 

Almost at once, his comms panel beeped. He looked over. It was the Supreme Leader. He considered putting his helmet back on but instead he put it down, patted his hair into order and keyed the comms unit on.

“Has the girl woken?” said Snoke immediately.

“We have talked.”

“And?”

Kylo snorted. “She’s certainly defiant.”

“Yet this amuses you.”

Kylo’s lips quirked in a half-grin. “She can be as rude as she likes, it makes no difference to me. The power is all in my hands, and she knows it. Even if she tries to pretend otherwise.”

“How mature you are suddenly,” said Snoke drily. “What have you found out about Luke and the First Jedi Temple?”

“Nothing yet,” said Kylo, turning serious. Snoke’s tolerance for chit-chat was minimal.

“Why not?” Snoke asked sharply.

“You have often counselled me to have more patience,” began Kylo cautiously. Snoke nodded for him to continue. “And you suggested we should try to win her over to our side. To me, this seems to be a time when we may succeed best if we proceed slowly and let our actions speak for themselves.”

“Go on,” said Snoke, cocking his head with interest.

“The girl has been maltreated. We know her life on Jakku was hard, and the Resistance have seized on her to work for them without much support. I get the sense that her stay on Ahch-to was unsuccessful. I want her to see what the First Order can offer her instead.”

“You think a few days of good food and decent living conditions can win her over to our side? I don’t imagine she is so weak-willed.”

“No, not just that. It’s….everyone else she’s ever met has tried to make use of her immediately. I want her to see that this is a good, ordered society that looks after its own.”

“That morality you speak of….” Snoke mused.

“And pride. Lots of pride. She may see for herself that the Dark Side is a better fit.  We have a lot to offer her, and I think she will accept that without me lecturing her.”

“How very observant of you,” said Snoke. “Perhaps you are growing up at last, my boy.”

“If I may speak freely…” Kylo began. Snoke nodded, and he went on. “Too many people follow your orders because they are afraid of you. They are poor tools for your purposes. As soon as you take your eyes off them, they slacken. I’ve seen them, fooling around and laughing when they think I’m not watching. I don’t want that kind of allegiance from Rey.”

“I see your mind. The multitude singing happily as they load fuel cells onto a destroyer, together…”

“It’s from an old holovid,” muttered Kylo. “But the point is, shared goals make us stronger.”

“I don’t believe in that, as you well know. It is struggle that makes us stronger, and through competition, excellence can rise to the top.”

“I think the Knights of Ren would have succeeded better if they’d spent less time doing that and more time cooperating,” said Kylo.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Snoke. “Teamwork is just another word for weakness propping itself up. I don’t have time for that.”

Kylo stared at his feet, chewing his lip nervously.

“But you may be right about Rey,” said Snoke. Kylo looked up hopefully. Snoke did not look particularly angry. 

“She is too powerful to be safe for us, unless she serves us whole-heartedly out of her own beliefs,”  he ventured.

Snoke leaned back and gave Kylo a dismissive wave of one hand. “Very well, continue with your methods. But remember, I still want to learn where Luke went and whether he could still be a threat. And what happened to the Jedi temple?” 

“Yes Master.”

“And remember too, who leads here. Only the strongest. Make sure that is you, not her!”

Kylo nodded and bowed. When he straightened up, the comms screen was empty. He threw himself down on his bed and blew out a long breath before stretching into a relaxed pose.

A moment later he sat up suddenly, swiping at his face. He’d just had the ghostly sensation of water covering his nose and mouth. It was something Rey was doing. He reached out carefully with the Force, and caught flashes of what she was feeling. Fear and delight. She found it so difficult to put her head underwater that he almost laughed out loud. She didn’t notice his intrusion, being totally involved with the miracle of running water. 

She began to wash herself, smoothing gel over her warm, slick skin. Kylo lay back in his bed, hardly daring to breathe.  _ Please don’t notice I’m here, please don’t notice I’m here.  _ A delicious warmth spread through his body and a slow, heavy pulse started up in his groin.

It was amazing the Supreme Leader hadn’t thought to mention this aspect of the Force bond.

On second thoughts, that was not a conversation Kylo ever wanted to have with him.

His mental link with Rey evaporated a few minutes later. By then his heart was doing a sledgehammer dance in his chest and his cock was trying to shove its way out of his pants. He undid the fastenings and grabbed it with a gasp. No time to undress, when his senses were filled with the memory of that silky skin, those long limbs. He rolled over onto his belly and moaned, then bit down hard on the pillow, working himself furiously for a urgent and messy hand-job. The bed jerked and shook as he found relief at last.

There were memories Kylo knew better than to disturb from the caskets of his heart where he kept them locked away. Girls he’d known when he was still the son of senator. Their laughter, their little secrets, the wild starry dreams they’d briefly shared, back when he believed it was possible. And for months, his memories of Rey had hurt too much to look at, blotted out by his last sight of her on Starkiller Base: radiantly triumphant, having defeated not only him but the voice of the Dark Side that bid her to finish him. He could have died right there. She had been magnificent, and everything he would never have or be.

But now she was here. A wild creature, still with the warmth of the desert on her,  caught in the little grey cage of her room. Something of his very own, something he’d earned for himself.

A few hours later he woke again, languid and heavy-limbed but unable to fall back to sleep.  There didn’t seem to be any reason to be awake, unless it was some disturbance in the Force. He reached out curiously with all his senses. His bond with Rey was as frustratingly unreliable as ever and he couldn’t pick up anything from her. Except…was she  _ counting? _

Figuring out something with her numerical mechanic’s mind, was she? Numbers, words….she had to be plotting. Kylo grinned into the dark. The Force had nothing to do with such things. If Luke had taught her anything about where her real power lay, she wouldn’t be wasting her time like this. Without the Force, what could she do against the massive flying fortress of the Finalizer and its thousands of obedient servants?

_ One two three four…..You’re wasting your time, Rey. I know the ways of the Force, and you don’t. I  thought you did, but that was just your sheer dumb luck.  _ He grinned sleepily and relaxed. His eyelids started to droop. 

Unless…just before his eyes shut his room seemed to light up briefly with a fleeting vision. The sun rising in a clear sky of rose-pink and pale green. Great dunes of topaz sand blazing as they caught the light. The wind had combed their sides into delicate ridges, each traced with white lines of frost that smoked into the air within moments as the light touched them. 

The strange image vanished, leaving Kylo’s room smaller and stuffier. 

_ Rey! Rey! Where was that?  _ But the Force bond was as fickle as ever, and all he could sense was the usual hum of air-conditioning and the faintly plastic smell of his room that nothing ever managed to mask. 

He fell asleep at last and dreamed, unaccountably, of rain.

 

  *  *       *       *



The lights on the Finalizer dimmed to signal some arbitrary nighttime. Rey lay on her bed, eyes screwed shut and tears wetting her eyelashes. After lying so long unconscious at the mercy of the medical droids, she was weak. Her legs, that had carried her for long, gruelling journeys across the sands of Jakku, now tired after pacing her small cabin for a short time. For some reason this upset her worse than anything.

Her dreams, when they came, were terrible. The chair of the interrogation room turned into the machine in Luke’s vision, and she was strapped in, screaming, as she became part of the machinery. She caught glimpses of another figure, a small dark-haired boy, running down corridors within the machine. She looked down on him from far above. He seemed to be carrying a tool, and he struck desperately at the workings as far as he could reach them. Whether to fix or to damage them, she couldn’t tell. He was too small to make any difference, and the pounding of the engines at her back went on unchanged.

Waking with a jolt, she kicked her way out of the blankets and ran out of the bedroom on staggery legs. There was no comfort in the other room. Just the flat, colourless stars out the window. 

_ One two three four….One two three four _ . She paced. The room was no smaller, no larger. She went back to bed, stared at the dark. 

Well, she’d lain awake through plenty of long, anxious nights in her ATAT.  There was always wordsmithing to pass the time.

_ One for the sun, that rises in the East. _

_ Two for the moon, that soothes lovers’ brows…. _

But that was too soft for this place. The sun would never rise on the Finalizer, and there surely were no lovers here. She tried to remember another one she’d made. 

_ Rain, I have heard of you _

_ People say you are soft _

_ But married to Time, _

_ You lick the rocks down to nothing,  _

_ Fill the oceans, fill the sky _

_ Then vanish and leave us begging _

_ How is that soft? _

She used to pass hours this way. It was a thing people did on Jakku, especially when the Breath of Ri’ia kept everyone trapped indoors. In the sandstorm season, travelling songliners were welcome around any hearth. People would pay to hear them tell the great tales and the small ones. They were part of her best memories of Jakku:  The wind howling outside, the hiss of sand on the metal wall of an old hull where she had gathered with other scavengers, all quarrels put aside for as long as the storm lasted. A luggabeast sighing and snoring in the shadows of one corner, a huge pot of some food heating on a pyropad. Everyone would share the food soon. Rey forgot her hunger while the songliner held them all within the gleam of her shadowed eyes. Her rich voice rising from a thrilling whisper to a terrifying shout. Empires blossomed and fell, worlds danced on her tongue. Lovers were reunited and the lost ones returned from deep space.

Rey used to sit outside her ATAT and try to invent something like those stories. Once, to her very great joy, one of the famous songliners had visited her on her way out of Niima Outpost, needing some little gadget fixed. As Rey coaxed the thing back to life, she’d gathered up her courage and told the songliner some words she’d put together to describe the feelings she had when she rode her speederbike at daybreak. The songliner had smiled and told her it was called a  _ poem _ , what she’d just said.

“What makes it a poem?”

“Well, partly the sound of it. Though it doesn’t have to rhyme, by the way. The main thing is that it leaves you different after you’ve said it or heard it. It is a little machine for changing minds and hearts. A tool, like your vibrospanner, only made of words.”

Encouraged, Rey took to inventing more of them, sitting outside her ATAT and trying to fit the words together as neatly as she would wire a circuit. From then on her nights were no less lonely, but at least they were less boring. Sometimes the poems she thought of pleased her, and she smiled into the darkness of her little ATAT cabin. She never told them to anyone else.

Now on the Finalizer they served just as well for putting her to sleep.  _ A tool for changing minds and hearts. The only tool I have. _ Her hands reached unconsciously towards the empty place where her lightsaber had hung by her side. She hugged herself instead, and drifted off to sleep as she tried to wrap words around her memories of Topaz Ridge at sunrise.

She woke again to find the lights had brightened. Time to get up. The shower this morning was already less interesting than it had been the night before. She got dressed and waited for whatever might happen next.

Next was Kylo Ren himself, knocking on her door and then barging in anyway when she didn’t respond. The room was instantly smaller with him in it, a faceless black bulk moving into her space with the feral grace of a dangerous animal.

“Still with the mask, I see. What do you want?” she said.

“Breakfast. And so do you, I imagine.”

Rey’s stomach clearly agreed. Saliva flooded her mouth. Rey swallowed with difficulty and glared at her captor.

“So what? I’m sure the droids will bring me something. Or not. You’re the one giving the orders here, after all.”

“I am. And I ordered them to bring a breakfast for both of us.”

“I’d rather eat by myself.”

“Don’t be childish, Rey. We have things to discuss, and we can do it like adults if you’ll stop playing Poor Little Miss Prisoner.”

“I am not being childish! I loathe you, and if I had to eat with you I’d be sick!”

“We all have our challenges to face. Your delicate stomach is yours. Ah look, here’s the food!”

A wave of rich and delicious smells assaulted Rey’s nose as a droid entered her cabin bearing steaming trays. Her stomach growled and her mouth was now awash with saliva so she had to keep swallowing. It didn’t matter how well she’d eaten since leaving Jakku, her body still had the same embarrassingly primal response to food.  Kylo cocked his head as though amused. He said nothing however, merely pulling out a chair for himself and sitting at the table. Rey hovered by the window, watching the droid set the table with plates. It uncovered the trays and trundled out. Rey stared at the food and the very hairs inside her nostrils quivered.

“Come on.”

“What are  _ you _ going to do, suck it into your mask through a straw? Because that is too weird.”

A long pause. Her eyes challenged the blank eyepieces of his mask.  _ Coward! _

He reached up and unhitched the helmet. She heard the strange mechanical hiss of escaping air as he did so. 

She studied him. The killer. Head tilted back, looking down that long, arrogant nose at her, full lips pressed shut in a firm line, giving nothing away. The heavy lines of his eyebrows marred by the place near the bridge of his nose where her lightsaber had torn a gash in his face. Only a faint line of darker, slightly grainy skin showed where he’d been cut, stretching from his forehead to his cheek. His hair was glossy and combed into a perfect fall of raven black waves. She could smell a faint perfume, and guessed that he’d put some effort into his appearance.

Still a killer though. She bored into him with her gaze, trying to convey her disgust at what he’d done. If he was reading her mind, she would show him the Han she had known: tough, funny, full of careless courage and unexpected kindness. Larger than life.

Kylo flinched.

The first time she’d killed anyone with a lightsaber was during the fight on Ahch-to, and that was a blur of strikes and counterstrikes. How would it feel to stand face to face and drive a blade into an unarmed man? Going into flesh, organs.

Kylo flinched again. Suddenly Rey could see Han’s face right in front of her, the shock and pain in his eyes. The ease with which the saber went in at first, yet still there was resistance.

The smell of burning flesh and charred bone.

Rey’s stomach did a somersault and she clapped her hand over her mouth.

Kylo stood up, suddenly wild-eyed, looming over her and breathing in great shuddering gasps.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “You don’t have to….keep on like that!”

Rey sat still, made herself very small. The violence in Kylo was very real. But she did not look away from him, and he had to meet her eyes at last.

“Don’t lie to me, then. That helmet there,” she pointed at it, “has its own atmosphere for you to breathe, doesn’t it? Made entirely of _ lies!  _ You can’t stand the real air, the truth. Don’t try to pretend the Dark Side is anything other than _ this!”   _ Savagely she mimed a stabbing motion.

She could see the whites of Kylos eyes, all the way around. He was shaking.

“It is! It is!  _ It is!” _ he said, with a child’s desperation. “It is much more than that!”

She said nothing, just let the words hang in the air to expose their own weakness. 

Kylo whirled around and shoved the table over. Plates and cups clattered and spilled onto the floor. He stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him.

Rey put her head in her hands. Tears leaked between her fingers. “And that’s why I won’t eat with you,” she murmured. 

Her breathing steadied at last and she crouched down to the mess on the floor. Little fried-looking nuggets of this, slices of that, strips of cooked meat, colourful sweet-scented things that must surely be some fruit, delicate crisp crackers of some kind, all drowned in a mixture of sauces and drink from a broken jug. 

She picked up a plate and loaded it up with the least soggy bits, brushing off the worst of the carpet fluff. Picking up the chair Kylo had knocked over, she sat in it and ate.

Jakku had plenty of sayings for the occasion, none of them particularly witty.  _ Winner eats all. No food like free food.  _ And her favourite:  _ Nothing tastes as good as victory, unless it’s food. _


	5. The Knights of Ren

It was time to talk to Rey again. Kylo’s bootheels made an angry drumbeat down the corridors, echoing down the grey hallways. There was no mistaking that body language. As he approached Rey’s room, the stormtroopers guarding her door stood to attention so rigorously they almost shook.

He leaned on the door and gave it a shove. This time it was he who almost fell into the room: Rey was standing on the other side, pulling it open just as he leaned his weight on it so he half-staggered through. He grabbed her shoulder for balance.

That wiped any trace of amusement off her face. She was forced to step backwards quickly to keep her feet. He kept hold of her, and his momentum carried them both across the floor in a clumsy parody of a dance until they collided against the table. They froze that way for a moment, his hand resting still on her shoulder. For all her light bones, she was strong: Those were her trapezius muscles, making tense triangles under his fingers where they tapered up to her neck. She carried her head like a queen despite the heavy kill collar she wore.

Last night when he’d sensed her in the shower, she’d kneaded the tension out of those muscles, bowing her head to do it. His thumb almost moved of its own accord to touch the same place, but she tensed even more, as though she knew what he was thinking. He pushed the memory aside hastily.

She swallowed, then regained her self possession, returning his gaze with a stony stare of her own. Abruptly she shrugged his hand off before edging sideways so she wasn’t craning up to look at him from chest height.

“On your way out?” he asked.

“No, I was just being polite and opening the door. I knew you were coming down the corridor. The Force, you know.” She waved a hand airily, pretending his size didn’t intimidate her.

“More than you realise,” he said. “And that’s what I want to talk about.” He sat on one of the chairs. The cleaning droids had been through, he noticed, and there was nothing more than a stain on the carpet as a reminder of the scene earlier that day. This time he was not going to let her get to him.

“You’ve been the aggressive one, Rey. There’s only one person doing the attacking, and that’s you. I can’t help wondering how your Jedi training went with Luke.”

She prowled around the room, not meeting his eye. It was the first time he’d seen her look abashed. She was wearing the black tunic and pants she’d been provided with, and they made her look pale. But there was a flush of colour on her cheeks: the brightest thing in the room.

“Maybe I’ll go for a walk after all. Give my escorts out there some exercise,” she muttered at last.

“You’re not answering me.”

She stopped and gave him a hunted look. “I — No, you capturing me is an aggression. Making me a prisoner!”

“But you can’t complain about your treatment now you’re here, can you?”

“You chased Luke off a cliff.”

“Except we didn’t. Where is Luke, Rey?”

She crossed her arms and pressed her lips together. She looked suddenly miserable. Kylo reached out carefully towards her mind with the Force. She’d let her guard down for an instant, long enough for Kylo to read her sense of abandonment.

“You don’t know either!” he said. “Luke vanished, and you were left to fend for yourself again!”

“It wasn’t like that!” she flared up. He said nothing, merely watched her. He’d meant to strike at her confidence; that was why he was here, after all. But even now her loneliness caught at him, twisting in his gut with a pang he recognised all too well. She stared out the window at the unmoving stars, and her shoulders slumped slightly. He reached out again with the Force. He had seen such power, such Light in her, that day on Starkiller Base. But now those fires were banked, hidden away. He sensed neither Dark nor Light in her, but something else. Something unformed. He would very much like to know what it was.

She whipped around suddenly. “Stop it! Stop spying on me!” She pushed him out of her mind so fiercely that he was in no doubt what she meant.

“I’m not really doing anything,” he said mildly. “Didn’t Luke tell you about the Force bond?”

She turned back to the window quickly, but not before he could register the look of shock in her eyes. “It’s none of your business!” she muttered.

Kylo waited a few moments and said gently, “The Force bond. It’s rare. Snoke told me.”

“Yes I know!” she said impatiently and stopped. She was so clearly hoping he’d say more that he risked touching her mind one more time with the Force. Her confusion was….loud. _What Force bond?_

She didn’t know at all.

“Rey, what happened on Starkiller Base is called an Awakening. You had the Force, but you didn’t know it or know how to use it consciously, though I’m sure you’d been doing things with it for years without realising.”

She glared at the floor. It seemed as though she wouldn’t speak, but then she said in a low voice, “A few times I thought I was going to die. I was climbing inside the one of the wrecks. Scavenging, as you say.” She gave him a savage look. He could imagine her, a tiny form dwarfed by the vast scale of the machinery around her. “I was up high, and my lights weren’t good. I missed my handhold. But I caught hold of something on the way down. Somehow I knew it was there, in the dark. Or another time…I fell. It seemed I must have flown, there was no way I could have jumped so far….I was a child. I thought maybe I could fly.”

He waited, but she said no more, so he went on. “When somebody with the Force, like you were, is challenged by another Force user, it can bring out their powers, and it can forge a link. Sometimes a master and a padawan have that bond. But sometimes it happens simply because the other person was there when you came into your powers.”

“What sort of link?” she asked, staring at him fearfully.

“You know already. You knew I was coming before I reached the door. I’m aware of where you are too, if I concentrate. You know I can pick up…” he hesitated, “Something of your feelings.”

“And I can pick up yours!” she snarled.

She had been standing almost huddled against the window frame. Now she straightened up and stared at him angrily. She was blocking him mentally as well. “Who was there for your awakening, then?”

“My master. Snoke.”

She pulled a face of revulsion.

“Don’t be so quick to judge. You’ve never even met him!” said Kylo.

“I don’t have to know him. I know what he does. I despise the First Order. You’re just typical warlords with fancier uniforms. All you want to do is enslave anyone that stands in your way, and you’ll use any kind of brutality to do it.”

“That’s not true. What we want is order. It’s even in our name, for stars’ sake. An ordered Galaxy is a safer Galaxy. The way things are now, you had to be hidden away on some planet for your own safety.”

“What do you know about that?” said Rey quickly.

“Nothing. It’s just what everyone guesses.”

“Who?”

“Me. The Supreme Leader. The Knights of Ren. We questioned Unkar Plutt, by the way.” He’d watched the footage the First Order’s operatives had brought back. He’d known only Tuanul village on Jakku, and it had reason to be the miserable place that it was: populated with mystics and ascetics, one wouldn’t expect anything else. But he’d seen that Niima Outpost was shockingly poor too: a sunblasted hellhole where people lived in junkheap shelters cobbled together from pieces of scrap. It was clearly Plutt’s monopoly that kept everyone at a subsistence level.

He’d seen images of where Rey had lived. Isolated as Niima Outpost was, she’d chosen an even lonelier place beyond its outskirts, making a ragged nest in an abandoned ATAT. He’d zoomed in on the scratches that marked one wall. Even, regular, careful, and so many of them. The sight had sent a cold finger down his back as he registered what they must represent. Followed by a flash of anger. What gives her the strength to remain in the Light, even after all this?

“What did Plutt say?” asked Rey, and Kylo returned to the present.

“He doesn’t know who dropped you on Jakku. Average-looking humans, he said. They paid him to take you and told him you’d make yourself useful.”

“That’d be right,” muttered Rey.

“What sort of people would leave you with Unkar Plutt?”

“They left me with somebody that was tough enough to protect me.”

“Protect his investment.”

“Everyone on Jakku knew what the rules were, with Unkar. They knew I belonged to him, and they wouldn’t risk crossing him.”

“Marvellous,” said Kylo. “You know, the Supreme Leader was the only person to realise the potential I had. He saw what the Force was doing to me, with nobody to teach me the power of my real nature. So he brought me here, where I belong. The First Order is like a family, Rey. They look after their own. They give you a place.”

“That’s very nice and all,” she said sarcastically. “Family values. Except I’ve seen how you serve the First Order.” Suddenly she lunged at him, driving an invisible lightsaber at his chest.. She stopped, leaning her fists on the table. Now it was her looking down on him, eyes blazing.

“You don’t have to go on!” he said through gritted teeth. “I feel it.” She blinked suddenly, surprised. She’d seen something in his mind he hadn’t intended to reveal. There was something about her intense stare, so close to him, that made him continue. “I feel it go in. Always,” he said quietly.

He’d never said that to anyone before.

She stepped back. Then the shock on her face changed to anger. “I’d like to stick a lightsaber into you. Then you’d know what it felt like for _real!”_

“Would you? And feel it for the rest of your life?”

She broke away with a gasp and turned back to stare out the window. “Where is my lightsaber, anyway?” she asked dully.

“I have it.”

“I bet you love that! You finally got your wish.”

“I’m keeping it safe for you,” said Kylo, though that had not been in his plans at all. ”We’re training later. The rest of the Knights and I. You can join us if you like. The stormtroopers outside will show you where the training facility is.”

“So I can learn to defeat you?”

“You’re loyal to what you know, Rey. But you don’t know much.”

She made no reply, and he went on. “In the meantime, you could learn some useful moves. Learn how to handle a lightsaber better. I wasn’t joking when I said I could teach you. It’s got to be better than sitting around here all day.”

She shook her head. Kylo got up and left the room quietly, leaving her staring miserably out the window.

He made his way briskly up to the Knights’ quarters and knocked on Slasheye’s door. Slasheye opened it. He was unshaven and red-eyed.

“Get your gear on and come to the training room. We’re going to do some sparring. We’ve been getting slack since Ahch-to.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Slasheye. “Give me ten minutes to get ready.”

There was no reply from Talks-to-Ghost’s room, so Kylo went back to ask Slasheye about him.

“He’s either polishing his holocrons or hiding under his blankets,” said Slasheye tiredly. “He’s not well.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He had a vision of the heat-death of the universe again.”

“And you’ve been drinking with him. You know that only makes him worse!” said Kylo. He stomped back to Talks-to-Ghost’s room and used the Force to blast the door open. Talks-to-Ghosts was indeed hiding under the blankets. At least he hadn’t set fire to the room this time, though there were a few scorch marks to suggest he’d tried.

“Up!” said Kylo, grabbing Talks-to-Ghosts by the shoulder.

“C-c-c-cold!” whined Talks-to-Ghosts. “It’ll all end in tears. The white towers will fall, all the kindly laughter, gone to the grave….gone….nothing but the mean red candles of the last stars, guttering out. So lonely…”

“Shut up!” said Kylo. “Why can’t you have visions that are some use for once? Nobody cares what’s going to happen in billions of years’ time!”

“It’s all one,” said Talks-to-Ghosts mutinously. “All times, all places….”

Kylo found Talks-to-Ghost’s armour shoved in the bottom of a cupboard. He threw it, piece by piece, trying to hit his Knight’s head so he was forced to get up and defend himself. Kylo could feel the Force bunching dangerously in the erratic way it did around Talks-to-Ghosts. Kylo chivvied him into his clothes, jollying him along to defuse the explosion he could feel brewing.

Being Leader of the Knights of Ren wasn’t what it used to be. Kylo hadn’t realised how much the other Knights’ Force powers had served to level out these two. Without them as a counterweight, Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts were getting more and more weird.

Training was a disaster, and Kylo was glad that Rey hadn’t taken him up on his offer to join them. Not that he’d expected her to.

“Focus! Focus! You’re barely using the Force at all, Slasheye. You’d do better if you closed your eyes,” Kylo told him as he danced around the lumbering figure, almost striking him from half a dozen angles. Slasheye closed his eyes. The Force flowed into him and he became suddenly fluid and poised. He also threw himself into a whirling attack towards an empty corner of the training room.

“I’m over here!” yelled Kylo, exasperated. Slasheye took off his helmet and grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry, sir. I just sensed someone over there….”

“They’ll probably be there tomorrow,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. Kylo rounded on him angrily.

“You are a kriffing joke! Why can’t you see whether the Resistance is massing its troops somewhere, or where Luke went, or what happened to the First Jedi Temple?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t.”

Kylo sighed. He could never mock them the way the others had. Any of them could have ended up so disastrously, given that much Force power. Kylo had seen far enough inside their heads to understand how thin the threads were holding them to any semblance of sanity. Talks-to-Ghosts had been driven out of his home by terrified villagers when he was a child, and with good reason. His wayward powers had wiped out all the other children. Slasheye had lived on the streets of a big city, avoiding his violent drunken mother until he was old enough to kill her with one blow of the Force. The First Order had saved them, but there really wasn’t much more Kylo could do for them.

“Well, with the others gone, you two will have to focus more on your fighting skills and less on your holocron searches. I’ll see you here, same time tomorrow,” said Kylo. “And I expect you to work on your physical fitness.”

The two Knights exchanged a meaningful glance before bowing to Kylo. As he left, Talks-to-Ghosts’ thoughts blared out along the Force in the unpredictable way he had. _The only skill we need to work on is our long-distance vacuum swimming. Now that girl’s here, the Supreme Leader’s got no use for us._

Kylo gave no sign he’d heard.. Those two were paranoid enough as it was. He left them doing workout routines and went back to his room. Clearly he needed to rebuild the Knights, and he knew he’d made notes somewhere on his pad about the locations of possible Force users.

As he sifted through his reports, looking for the rumours and hunches he’d noted down, he found himself distracted by thoughts of Rey. She was the most obvious possibility. A triumph for him, if he could manage it. He started doodling on his pad, trying to come up with a helmet design for her. Nothing romantic or impractical, but still it had to be beautiful. Something to reflect her deadly focus without hiding her grace. Something that told the world she didn’t need to skulk around and ask anyone’s permission for anything. No more picking at crumbs off the Galaxy’s plate.

He’d show it to her when she was ready. As soon as she saw herself in it she’d realise what she was. She’d thank him for drawing out the power that was in her.


	6. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo and Rey discover they share the same nightmares
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

After Kylo left, Rey sank down onto the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her conversation with Kylo had left her bewildered. Most of all, she was shaken by something she’d glimpsed in Kylo’s mind. She’d forced him to relive the moment on the bridge when he had struck his father down. Rey hadn’t been close enough to hear exactly what they’d said in those last moments, and Kylo’s memories had revealed far more than she’d seen then. In Kylo’s memories, she’d felt Han’s fingers touch Kylo’s cheek, and seen his last look of sorrow and forgiveness.

It broke Kylo. The certainty of madness was shattered, and in its place was only pain and unbearable longing. 

_ I could have forgiven him too, _ he’d thought.  _ Now I can never.… _

Had Han chosen his death? Did he sacrifice himself to save his son, or to snatch victory from him? Kylo raged and suffered for both. Nothing he might offer the Dark could match Han’s final act. No storm of Darkness came to lift him on wings of fearsome power; instead power slipped through his fingers like water.

Now it tormented Rey too. Who was Kylo, that his father would choose to die for him? Han had called him by another name.  _ Ben. _ Rey said it over softly. Ben. 

Would her parents have died for her?  _ Had  _ they died for her, already? Was leaving her on Jakku the best they could do?  She had always assumed they had left her there for her own safety. It was a queasy feeling, knowing Kylo and Snoke had discussed her and come to the same conclusion.

And now here she was. Perhaps this was exactly the fate her parents had feared for her.

Eventually her weakness passed and she pushed herself onto her feet. The walls of her room seemed smaller. 

_ One two three four _ …she paced.  _ One two three four, I hate this place, it’s such a bore.  _ Stupid doggerel verse. Even her mind was shrinking to the measure of this room.

On impulse she opened the door to the corridor. She needed to stretch her legs, which had grown so dangerously weak.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“We will accompany you,” said one of the stormtroopers stationed outside. They formed an escort  and followed her down the corridor. They said nothing more, and she ignored them, four dull white figures tramping stiffly in her wake.

Over the next few days, Rey pushed herself to walk as far as she could every day. She ignored Kylo’s invitation to train with the Knights, whatever that meant. If she cast out her Force senses, she could get a general idea of where he was, and walk the other way. She was thankful he didn’t seek her out, as he could surely have done.

The Finalizer reminded her of an insect hive. In Jakku she’d broken open the curious mounds that dotted some of the terrain, and seen the bewildering tunnels inside, full of silent busy workers. 

“Does anyone ever laugh here?” she asked her escort. 

“Third Shift is having comedy night round about this time,” said one. They slipped her into the back of Mess Hall Cresh to watch from the behind the audience. She had seen funny holovids before, but never in a crowd like this: hundreds of big, healthy stormtroopers in dull off-duty clothes sprawling in rows of chairs. If their bodies looked relaxed, their spirits were not. Rey heard their roars of laughter as the sound of an escape valve under terrifying pressure.  She quickly asked to leave. 

She liked the hydroponic farms the best: the bright light, the smell of growing things. She walked up and down the rows of plants, trailing her fingers through the leaves. They were the softest, most colourful things on the Finalizer. Droids and people worked without haste, handling the plants gently. But its artificial sunlight and orderly lines of crops weren’t much like real life.

“Is there anywhere with a view?” she asked. Her escorts took her to an officer’s lounge. People there were out of uniform, but the drabness of their clothes meant they looked much the same. All human. Even a tiny grim little place like Niima Outpost had more diversity. But obviously Rey with her escort guard stood out to them, even in her black tunic and pants. What muted conversation there was stopped, and people stared at her over their drinks or from behind the flimsies and datapads they were reading. She turned her back on them and looked out through the huge wall of transparisteel that made one whole side of the room. The stars outside were the same as she could see from her room. Mean and flat. There were no planets visible. She watched a few couriers and supply ships leaving or coming in to dock. The pilots seemed to know their business and it was all very orderly.

“Where are we?” she asked. 

“That information is classified.”

“Can I see one of the landing bays?”

“No.”

“The bridge?”

“No.”

She walked until she was tired, hoping to sleep when the Finalizer’s night came. She ate alone. Her dreams were no better than on Ahch-to: some brooding power that never revealed itself, but commanded her to walk the broad causeway to the marble plinth. Kylo was already bound on it, and she held the obsidian knife. The crowd roared. Chanting priests seized her hands, trying to force her to make the kill. Kylo looked up at her from the altar, his eyes unfathomably dark and full of sadness.

_ Do it. You know you want to.  _ As he opened his mouth to speak, blinding light poured out.

Rey would start out of sleep, sweating and wide-eyed. Sometimes she dressed and fled her rooms, hoping to wear herself out pounding the endless corridors. Her escort followed her.

On one such night she was walking so fast she was almost running. She could not shake her dream, so even the silent corridors held echoes of the baying crowd and Kylo’s presence was everywhere, a shadow of despair the lights could not dispel. 

She loped around a corner and suddenly the real Kylo was directly in front of her. He seemed to be waiting for her, standing like a black tower, arms folded. Rey stopped with a little pant of surprise. He inclined his helmet gravely towards her.

“Not sleeping?” he asked.

“Obviously.”

“Nor I. Walk with me, then.” 

She hesitated, and Kylo waved her escort away. It would look stupid to run after them, so she shrugged. “All right.”

They walked side by side for a while. She tried to compare the impassive black figure striding next to her with the tortured young man she saw in her dreams.  

“Are you going anywhere in particular?” she asked, when she’d lost track of the corridors and turns they’d taken. “Because it all looks pretty much the same to me.”

“No. But we could go to the scope room. There’s a better view.”

“Of what?”

“Stars.”

“No thanks,” she said. 

He cocked his head down at her. “Don’t you like stars?”

“The stars on Jakku were beautiful. They looked so alive. People gave them names and made stories about them. Here they’re just lights.”

“Maybe I judged Jakku too harshly.” He sounded amused.

“What would you know? It was a lot livelier than this place. Are we ever going to get to a system, see some planets?”

“It’ll be a few months,” said Kylo. “We’re parked at a transfer point until then.”

“Why?”

“First Order business. You don’t need to know.”

From the traffic she’d seen out the viewports, Rey had guessed the Finalizer was stocking up on supplies. There was construction work going on in the lower decks, too. Getting ready for something, or perhaps being repaired after the battle at Starkiller Base.

The corridor lights started to brighten. First Shift would be coming on soon. Rey yawned. Kylo took her back to her room. The guards stepped aside to let her in. 

“Sweet dreams,” said Kylo, bowing ironically.

“I doubt it.”

“Maybe you can join us for training later.”

“I don’t think so.”

But it became a regular thing: she would walk the halls of the Finalizer, sleepless, and Kylo would be there too, always alone. It was a big ship, but he could find her when he wanted to. The Force bond was a strange thing between them. She could reach out and be close to him, if she wanted to. She didn’t want to. It was difficult to cope with the way his mind sometimes brushed against hers, bold and curious. She blocked him out, using the Force in a way that became easier with practice.

One night she came upon him staring out one of the transparisteel ports in a wide hallway. Even under his stiff costume she could sense the exhaustion rolling off him in waves. She stood next to him. Her guards stood at a distance, waiting to be dismissed.

“Bad dreams?” she said softly.

“You know,” he said, just as softly. “You’re there too.”

“The temple? The crowds?” she asked.

He nodded. “And the sacrifice.”

Rey shuddered. “I don’t want to. I don’t know what you think I am, but I don’t want to do it.They’re trying to make me…”

“I know,” he said.

“Who are they?” asked Rey.  “And what is that place in the dream? I thought it was the Jedi Temple. Luke kept dreaming of it too, and it was part of the island…but it seems evil, what happens in the dream.” She took a breath to say more, then shut her mouth with a snap. She’d barely spoken for weeks, and now her mouth mouth wanted to run away with her. In front of her enemy.

Her enemy who knew her dreams…

“I thought it was one of the Sith temples on Moraband. But I think you’re right, it’s the temple on the island.”  He nodded as though thinking it over. “Maybe the Jedi turned bad, or their temple was taken over by other people. Their history is so long and so much of it is hidden. Anything’s possible.”

But…” she looked up at him quickly. He had half-turned to study her through the black eyepieces of his helmet. “But in the dream, you want me to finish what…what they’re asking me to do. It’s like you’re expecting it.”

Kyo flinched and his hands tightened on the sill of the viewport. “I exist to serve. My Master has made that very clear.”

“‘ _ I exist to serve, _ ’” she mimicked him. “You are so fake when you say things like that. Like on the bridge. ‘The Supreme Leader is Wise,’ you said. You’re hoping if you say it enough, it’ll come true. You don’t really believe it.”

“You don’t know anything about duty. Or about  _ belonging _ , Rey. There’s a cost. If I am to be a sacrifice…” His voice wasn’t quite steady.

“Han was the sacrifice. He chose that. Even if you wish he didn’t.”

“I do wish…” Kylo’s voice was very low, little more than a husky growl through his mask.  “Killing him was to be my final test. But I wish he’d never come after me. He should have stayed away.”

“So you wouldn’t have had to choose,” said Rey bitterly. “But you _ did  _ choose!”  They were back to this: the choice he had made. A confused, frightened young man, but still a killer. She couldn’t be standing shoulder to shoulder with him, talking about dreams and looking at the stars! She turned away and marched over to her guards. “Take me back to my room!”

She heard him call her name, but she didn’t turn and he didn’t follow. She walked back to her room. She wasn’t sure if the sense of failure curdling her thoughts was hers or his.

_ So lonely.  _ His thought or hers? She stomped around her room, trying to shake it off.

_ If I am lonely, it is with the loneliness of the first star _

_ My light to your eyes, first and most fearless of the coming night. _

_ If I am lonely, it is with the last candle of the last house _

_ Alone on the darkening hills, the home of hope. _

 

That was a good one. She’d think up some more tomorrow.

  
  


*            *             *

  
  
  



	7. Black Eyes and Bacta Patches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eventually Rey takes up Kylo's offer to use the Finalizer's training facility. The remaining Knights of Ren aren't pleased to see her, and afterwards she discovers that Kylo has healing powers. It's an intriguing feeling.
> 
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> * * *

Rey’s conversations with Kylo left her unsettled. They raised questions that nobody else on the Finalizer could answer but Kylo himself, and he had little reason to answer her truthfully when he couldn’t even be truthful with himself. When she attacked him with her words, she found her targets all too easily. The satisfaction of wounding him that way was short-lived.

She didn’t want to see him, yet what else was there to do?  Her body craved more action than this endless pacing down corridors. The next day she asked her guards to take her to the training facility when the Knights were sparring. Kylo was not wrong when he suggested that Rey could stand to improve her lightsabers skills. 

The training room was a large, white sterile space, brightly lit. There were some mirrors and a number of structures that could be climbed or moved around. Racks of weapons stood on two sides.

Two tall black forms were sparring with practice swords when she walked in. By the time she realised neither of them were Kylo Ren, it was too late.

“Oh look, here’s our replacement,” said one. “The girl we’ve all heard so much about.”

“Rule us, O Queen of the Sun,” said the other, with an exaggerated bow. He was mad. Rey could feel it without even reaching out.  The Force warped around him and he was  _ not all there, _ literally: part of him was somewhere else. His mind had not withstood the strain of that partition.

“She’s too good to rule the likes of us. It’s a one-way trip out the airlock for us, Talksy, now Snoke’s pet project is here.”

“Or Kylo’s pet project, you mean. Is she that good, though?” asked the crazy one, taking a few steps towards Rey. She felt the Force from him like the twist of a knife in her head, so sudden it made her gasp.  The Knight laughed. “The Force would eat out of her hand like a tame bird, but she doesn’t know how to call it.”

“Hey, remember that Twi’lek girl that wanted to join the Knights?” said the first one. “In Grordah’s Pit? Ha, that was funny!”

“Has that already happened?” said the other one. “Shame. I was looking forward to it.”

“Look, she hasn’t got her lightsaber. Let’s see if she’s really any good.” The Knight tossed down his practice sword and reached his hand out towards one of the weapons racks. A metal weapon combining blades and spikes jumped out of its place and smacked into his grip with unmistakeable weight.

Rey turned to go. Her escort was waiting on the other side of the door. But the door locked itself before she could touch it, and she heard a snigger from behind her.

“Leaving so soon?”

She whirled around. The heavier of the two knights was stalking towards her, twirling his blade. Showing off how easily he could handle the weight and heft of it. 

Kylo had done that, and it hadn’t worked for him. Rey was already running quickly around the perimeter of the room to the nearest weapons rack. She’d spotted a long staff. The second Knight, the not-all-there one, almost sauntered to stand in her way. He put up his practice sword. Rey jumped onto the weapons rack and ran along it, clearing the Knight’s casual swing with a leap, legs tucked high out of the way. She pulled the staff into her hand when she landed, teetering dangerously on the rack. But now she was in the corner of the room, and both Knights were closing in on her. She launched herself onto the floor and managed to get past one of them with a jab-duck-jab manoeuvre. His reflexes were way off, and he doubled over as the end of her staff connected with his solar plexus.

Then she was parrying blows from the first Knight. Her staff was too light for her opponent’s weapon. He chopped at it like a woodsman, and she felt the staff begin to splinter. She danced away frantically, drawing on the Force instinctively. She found she could anticipate his moves enough to avoid most of his blows. In him, the Force stuttered like a broken circuit. One moment he’d be a deadly storm of perfectly timed moves that she could barely counter, then just as suddenly he lapsed into battering at her senselessly. He was still strong, and Rey’s breath was coming in hard, desperate pants. The smell of her opponent filled her nostrils: masculine sweat with a sharp alcoholic edge to it. 

The barely-there Knight finally straightened up and started circling them both. He didn’t seem interested in joining the fight until something made him cock his head like a loth-hound hearing its master’s whistle. Rey was aware of him shaking off whatever madness the Force bound him in. Suddenly he was  _ all there. _ The amount of Force in him was terrifying, and he had no control over it at all. He started shouting, “Her!  _ She’s _ the one! If she and Skywalker come together, they will destroy us!”

“They already did. Nothing happened,” grunted the Knight facing Rey. 

“No, this is the future! If they find each other in the Temple, we’re doomed!” He ran at her, slashing his practice sword around like the madman he was. But it was the Force in him that undid Rey: before he even reached her, he’d sent such power slamming into her that she was knocked completely off her feet, the breath crushed out of her. She rolled desperately to one side, sensing the first Knight’s weapon chopping down towards her neck. She managed to catch one of its spikes in her staff and twist it away. The Knight booted her and both weapons went flying. His partner joined in, bashing her with the practice sword and laying into her with his boots. Rey tried to protect her head with her forearms but some of the blows connected, if only glancingly. She saw stars for a moment as something struck her face. Half-blinded, she was reduced to kicking out and up with her feet, aiming for the inner knee or the groin. 

She tried meanwhile to reach for the Force. Instead of the surge of power she’d felt in her fight with Kylo, she felt nothing but a fractured mess, impossible to grasp. The crazy Knight couldn’t control the Force, but he did something to it that made it impossible for her to control it either. There was no clean contest of wills.

Rey took blow after blow, feeling them only dully as a kind of weakness. She knew from experience that the pain would arrive the moment she gave up and stopped fighting. She mustn’t stop, or it would be all over. But her arms and legs were growing weaker and weaker. She couldn’t keep going much longer.

The door to the room flew open with a loud thump and she could feel Kylo’s presence. His heavy feet thudded across the soft floor matting in a rush and for a moment she was sure he was coming to finish her off. The electric snarl of his lightsaber igniting made her hair stand on end. Rey tried to uncurl herself and see what was going on but waves of pain pushed her to the edge of black out.

“Ho, hold on, it’s not how it looks!” said one of the Knights, staggering back out of the way. “We were testing her…”

“You were beating her up and if I’d been a minute later you would have killed her,” yelled Kylo. His lightsaber connected with something, and splinters of durasteel flew across the room. There was a series of thumps and yells, and then silence, apart from a lot of heavy breathing. 

“Get yourselves to the medbay and then wait in your rooms. I’ll have a new assignment for you both,” said Kylo coldly.  Rey heard unsteady footsteps making their way out the door.

The lightsaber was switched off with a short buzz and slow, heavy footfalls approached her. She tried to look up at the shadow looming over her but her eyes were so painfully puffed up that she could barely see.

“Let’s have a look at you,” Kylo said. He sounded oddly relaxed, as though the fight had drained some of his usual tension. He must have taken his gauntlets off, because she could feel his fingers working over her joints and the bones of her arms with surprising gentleness. It still hurt as he flexed and prodded, and sometimes Rey’s breath hissed with pain. 

“No breaks there, I think,” he said, and nudged her body so she was lying straight. She felt him undo the belt on her tunic, and started to protest. “I have to check your ribs,” he said. She tensed as he reached up under the tunic and started moving his hands over her sides. His palms were curiously warm, and under his gentle strokes her bruises seemed to heat up until most of the pain was dissipated. “Oh, that might be a break there,” he said, smoothing his thumb across the most painful spot, under her right armpit. “Or no….a pulled muscle.” He stroked it, and the pain became less.  It felt so wrong, but she just wanted him to keep spreading that delicious healing warmth. She grimaced, hating her own weakness.

“Can you open your eyes? Look at me,” he instructed. But she couldn’t: her eyes were swollen shut. “Come on then. You need bacta.” He worked his hands under her body and then she was lifted up so she was cradled in his arms. The sudden movement made her dizzy, and a wave of returning pain overwhelmed her. She passed out.

She was coming back to groggy awareness when they arrived at a black metal door with a silver border around it. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what. Kylo palmed the door open and carried her into a dimly-lit room. She felt herself laid down on some kind of couch. Kylo moved off and she could hear him opening and shutting doors. She waited for a medtech or medical droid to start examining her. Instead, Kylo came back and leaned over her with something in his hands. 

“This might feel a bit cold. It’ll bring down the swelling around your eyes.” A moment later he laid whatever it was over her face. It was shockingly cold at first, and then her skin began to tingle under it. “Now for your arms.” She felt him wrap the same cold stuff around her arms. “And your shins took a drubbing.” More strips of coolness wound around her legs. The pain started to drain away. She heard him unwrap something, and he put a thick, flexible patch disc in her hands. It was humming slightly. “Put that over that torn muscle,” he instructed. She fumbled at it until he took it out of her hands. Once again she felt his hands slide under her tunic, pushing the disc up onto the place where her ribs hurt. His fingers rested for a moment on the side of her breast. They both froze for a moment, and she heard his breath hitch in his throat. Then he roughly pulled his hand away and out from under her clothes.

Nothing called her attention as much as those two spots where his fingers had rested for a moment, even with all her aches and pains and the icy tingle of the bacta patches. Rey swallowed and tried to turn her thoughts elsewhere.

“This isn’t a medbay, is it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why didn’t you take me there?”

“I have my own medical supplies, and I don’t like talking to the medtechs.”

“You don’t like talking to anyone.”

“I talk to you, Rey.” He sounded injured.

She had plenty of ripostes to that, but all of them sounded churlish. She hissed quietly between her teeth. Being considerate towards patricides who saved her life and healed her injuries didn’t sit well with her, but neither did being rude.

Kylo became businesslike again. “I’m taking the patch off your face. Try to open your eyes again. I have to check for concussion.” 

The patch came off with a slight slurping noise. Rey found she could crank her eyelids open. Kylo’s mask was inches away, an unmoving stare. She flinched as he shone a light into her pupils. Then he pulled away with a satisfied nod. “One more thing,” he said, and ran a scanner over her head and neck. She imagined it somehow triggering the kill collar, and suppressed a shudder.

“That seems to be okay,” he said. “Any pain anywhere else?” She shook her head, and he turned away to pack the scanner into some sort of kit. She looked around, and realised with a start that these must be his own personal quarters.

His quarters, and she was beginning to feel so dangerously comfortable! The warm tingle in her ribs, that traitorous spot on the side of her breast that seemed to wait for another touch, and now Kylo was sitting right there, turning to look at her. Suddenly she needed to put distance between them.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Really? This is the rewards of power? I’ve never seen a more lifeless place. Why is everything so ugly?”

Kylo growled something unintelligible through his helmet and leaned back a little. Not far enough for Rey’s liking.

“Still with that helmet. Why do you wear it, anyway?” She stared at him for a beat. His mask, of course, gave away nothing. “Do you play music through it?” she asked brightly. “Something to make the days pass more pleasantly?”

“What are you talking about?” Kylo sounded bewildered. As he was meant to: Rey would keep changing the subject for as long as it took to keep him off balance. Using her words as vibrospanners to loosen the floor under his feet.

“An idea Finn had. He was going to wire up his helmet so he could listen to music while he was on guard duty. Nobody would know. Stars, living in this place, you’d need something to cheer you up.”

“Finn. The traitor.”

_ “Finn. The traitor,” _ she mimicked. “ _ ‘Scavenger.’  _ Where do you scrabble up these insults from? A child on Jakku could do better.” 

“Jakku was rich in insults then. Good to hear.”

“You have no idea. A good insult should leave you too outraged to speak, too amazed to laugh, and too crushed to try repeating it for at least a week.”

“That’s stupid,” he said. “And music in a helmet is even stupider.”

“Ouch, so cutting,” Rey deadpanned. “Anyway it’s not stupid. A freighter mechanic on Jakku let me listen on his helmet when I found him the stabiliser coils he needed. He always had it on when he was working in vacuum, he said.” Rey stopped, thinking of that day. She’d sat in the dusty shade next to the grounded freighter, looking at the usual view of the shipyard. The sun on the hulks under repair was almost too bright to look at.

As soon as the music started she’d shut her eyes, and the sun-blasted shipyard vanished from her mind. The music drew her away to some distant world, some dark, intimate space where somebody crooned their secret longings that became her own. The music entered her like sugar melting on the tongue. She hadn’t known such things were possible. 

Kylo sat very still, watching her, his head tilted on one side. She’d given something away, and she wasn’t sure what.  

“There wasn’t much to do on Jakku was there? Besides…..scavenge.” He said the word this time without mockery. 

“Do?”

“Do in your spare time.” Rey heard the sneer come back into his voice. “I mean, Jakku’s hardly the cultural hub of the Galaxy is it?” 

“Oh, the fun never stopped. We had rocks. We could throw them at other rocks,” she said acidly before sitting up and rounding on him with some heat. “Don’t be so contemptuous! Poor people aren’t dumb, you know. Even without holovids, they find ways to entertain themselves. I doubt any of you hive-rats are smart enough to do what the songliners do.”

“Songliners?” The conversation jinked when it should have janked, and Kylo was thrown off again just as he was gathering up steam to get annoyed with her.

“The storysmiths. They’ve been part of Jakku as long as anyone remembers.” 

“What do they do?”

“Well, sandstorms are long and boring on Jakku. You can’t go out. In the storm season, people have always sat around and told stories to pass the time. The songliners keep the stories. You invite them to your camp, and they’ll make the time pass. They remember days and days of stories. Ones that make you laugh and ones that make you cry.”

Kylo sat hunched over, listening to her with genuine interest, as far as she could tell. She watched his long, bony hands hanging loosely over his knees, still for once. Tired, maybe, from their healing work. It was remarkable how different Kylo was here, in his own environment. His public self was either stiff to the point of pompousness, or simmering with latent violence. Here he was relaxed, turned inward. Rey suddenly knew that if she reached in with the Force she would know his private thoughts. But she did not want find sympathy with him, just as she did not want to remember the press of his fingers on her skin.

“Can you remember any of those stories?” he asked, so quietly his voice was little more than a soft rumble in his helmet.

And boom! There they were, unasked: the thoughts she did not want to read.  _ She called the room ugly, and it’s true! Everything here is so ugly! When she thinks of the desert, it’s beautiful. When she thinks of the sea, it’s beautiful.  _

“Not now. I think I need to go to my room and recover,” she said hurriedly. She stood up, staggering slightly as her battered legs protested the movement. Bacta was good, but it wasn’t magic. Kylo moved to steady her but she crossed her arms to forestall him. She could stand on her own. They stood that way for an awkward moment. Then she remembered what the songliner had told her once.  _ A machine for changing hearts and minds. _

“I might remember some stories,” she conceded. “When I’ve rested.” 

He nodded and got up to offer her his arm. She shook her head and limped doggedly to the door unaided. She didn’t remember the escort following them from the training room to Kylo’s room but there they were, waiting outside. For once she was thankful for her guards; they made a shield between her and Kylo’s stare, which bored into her back as she walked away.


	8. Who's Afraid of Little Red Riding Hood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Kylo has lots of regrets. He had Rey at his mercy and what did he do? Nowhere near as much as he would have liked! Meanwhile Snoke seems just a little bit too interested in her progress.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

He wanted to punch himself.

Yesterday she’d been here, at his mercy, in his debt, and in his room. He’d been in the perfect position to lay out the benefits of power and privilege and all the First Order could offer her, while indulging his fantasies a little. He knew they could be more than fantasies too; much as she tried to ignore her physical reactions to his touch, he felt them through the Force bond she was so desperate to reject.

There were a thousand things he should be doing: questioning Rey about Luke and the Jedi Temple, for instance. Probing her feelings about the Resistance, and then working to change them. Maybe even impressing her with his skill and knowledge of the Force.

Instead he let her sidetrack him with her flippant talk about everything and nothing. He’d listened to her, curious to discover what was in her besides the Force and the Light that made her his adversary. What made her more than just a pretty girl whose long legs and slim waist and sun-touched skin pleased him? Pretty girls were hardly a rarity.

And then, buried in the conversation like a landmine was the moment when she’d looked at where he lived.

_ Why is everything so ugly? _

He’d pushed it aside quickly and let her rattle on, annoying and amusing him, while that thought sank its acid into the back of his mind. Thanks to the Force bond, he knew exactly what she meant.  _ You have such power, and this is all you can find to do with it? To live in a grey box, bound in deadly obedience, in a metal hive empty of all that makes life good? _

While she was full of such things! Before he even heard them, he knew what her stories would be. Life, bold and vivid as blood. Journeys, adventures, love and courage, laughter and freedom and more light than he could bear. All the things she’d never had and all the things he didn’t deserve.

Now she was gone. She’d given him the brush-off. And rudely, at that! 

_ Don’t you care that I saved your life?  _ He wanted to storm into her room and demand an answer.

_ Call this a life? _ she’d say. Better he never asked.

Kylo had to be more persuasive than this. Snoke would be furious, the way things was going. Or not going.

As though conjured by his thoughts — which in fact he was — Snoke’s callsign came through on the comms unit a few minutes later.

“How’s the girl?” Snoke asked at once. Lately he had no other interests, which was another irritation. Kylo wasted enough time on First Order concerns, yawning under his mask through endless tactical meetings. It was galling that the Supreme Leader didn’t care to ask how any of that was going.

“The Knights tried to beat her up in the training room.”

“How did that work out for them?” asked Snoke, eyes gleaming with interest.

“Talks-to-Ghosts had one of his power surges. She wasn’t expecting it. I had to pull them off her. Master, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about those two.”

“Time we dispensed with them?” 

“I want to send them out looking for Force-sensitives for the Order. They are powerful in their way, and on search missions it doesn’t matter if they are erratic. I mean, it wastes a bit of fuel when they follow false leads, but they’re probably better at hunting than anything else. We need to rebuild the group, and I think it’s something they could actually do well.”

Snoke gave him a considering look. “Not trying to be too kind to them, are you?”

“No, I’m trying to rebuild the Knights. That seems like something we should be concerned about.”

“Really?” 

Kylo could feel Snoke trying to dig around in his mind. He allowed his annoyance with the remaining Knights to surface: an honest emotion that Snoke could read easily. “I think they could be more useful elsewhere. With a squad of stormtroopers as minders, of course,” he replied.

“Do as you wish,” said Snoke with a careless flick of his bony fingers. Then he leaned forward suddenly into the imager. “And how are  _ you? _ You woke me up, you know?”

“I’m sorry, Supreme Leader.” 

“Take a sleep tab. That dream about the walls is getting on my nerves. Stop it.”

Kylo bowed his head, upset and puzzled.  _ He _ didn’t dream of the walls closing in. Rey did. It had woken him too, and he’d gone out hoping she’d take one of her midnight walks. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a vision, just a manifestation of how much she hated being on the Finalizer. It was unsettling to know that Snoke picked up on her dreams as well. Or was he getting them from Kylo, third-hand through the Force bond?

These days, Force bonds pulled at him from both sides: Snoke with his demands, Rey with her unfathomable mysteries. He was sick of feeling like a fly in a web.

“The girl is upsetting you.”

“Her, the Knights. Hux. It is all very unsatisfactory.” Suddenly he was sick of doing it all on his own. “Master, she hates the First Order, and maybe I’m not the one to persuade her. Why can’t you come here and make it clear to her as you made it clear to me? You remember I doubted, but you made the right choice obvious.”

Snoke’s head jerked back and he frowned. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet. I’m not in a hurry, but I want results. Break her, Ren, if you have to.”

Snoke switched off the transmission without ceremony, as usual. 

He hadn’t answered Kylo’s question. Why wouldn’t Snoke break her, or persuade her? He kept badgering Kylo about her, but he gave no explanation why he wouldn’t come to the Finalizer himself.

Was he…afraid?


	9. Paying the Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey makes new friends.

The next day Rey forced herself to walk as usual, down and down the endless halls of the Finalizer. Her stiff joints  reminded her of her fight the previous day. At least, thanks to the miracle of bacta, she didn’t have two black eyes and a nose like Unkar Plutt’s. The bones of her face still ached and every breath she took brought a twinge from her injured ribs.

“Where haven’t I seen?” she asked her escort.

“The education pods,” answered one of them.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

They went a different way and came to rooms that reminded Rey of a dimly-lit version of the hydrofarm, with rows of children instead of plants. They sat straight and still in front of their screens, tapping away, heads encased in virtual reality helmets. The next rooms had them in rows again, doing physical drill. Another room, and a hundred children droned their rote learning over cases of tools, naming their dimensions and uses. Rey itched to lay her hands on the tools.

They came out into another corridor and Rey’s ears were caught by an unexpected sound: children doing things children normally do, namely fighting. They were just out of sight around a corner. A food tray and smashed plates scattered across the corridor nearby.

“Get off, kriff it, you sack of sarlacc stinkbreath!”

“Ow, let go, it’s none of your business!”

“It is! You can’t do this! I hate you!”

“Stop it, you two! I hear troopers!”

The last voice was a girl’s. Rey sped up to reach the corner before her guards. Two boys were lying on the floor pummelling each other. An older girl was trying to drag them apart. She had long tightly-curled black hair  threaded with  colourful beaded braids.

“Hey, what’s this all about?” asked Rey. The boys sprang apart sullenly. The girl ducked her head so her face wasn’t visible. With a sinking feeling Rey realised who it was. These were the Kezedar kids. The girl, with the terrible wound on her face, taken for Rey’s sake. The boys were staring at Rey with dislike.

She couldn’t leave them like this. She turned to her guards and used the Force on them for the first time since they’d been assigned to her. “Please stand at the end of the corridor and keep people away while I deal with this situation,” she said, pulling on every ounce of persuasion she had. It sounded so plausible. This was a sensitive matter. She was there to deal with it.

Rey was certain it wouldn’t have worked if she’d been asking for access to the engines or a comms unit. But what she was asking was not forbidden or dangerous. On her walks she had not been barred from talking to people; if anything it was encouraged. So now if she wanted to talk to some children she’d just met, it was none of their business. Merely good manners to stay out of it.

The troopers retreated to the end of the corridor.

“You’re the Kezedar children. Hux showed you to me.”

“We remember you,” said the older boy resentfully.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I am going to do everything I can to stop you getting hurt any more,” she told the children. The boys looked up at her, their eyes filled with mistrust. The girl hid her face.

“Look at me,” said Rey gently.

“Why?”

“Because I feel…not _responsible._ I mean, Hux did this, not me. But I care.”

The girl accepted that, and allowed Rey to lift her chin. Where her hair fell loose from its braids, it made a soft  cloud over her face. Rey pulled it away gently.  The diagonal scar underneath was  broad and poorly healed, leaving her eye socket misshapen and the eye reddened and permanently half-shut.

“Does it hurt?” Rey asked. The girl nodded. Rey swore under her breath.

“They did this to her, and Barra still wants to join them!” said the younger boy.

“Well what choice have we got? They’re only going to space us anyway. We’re just useless mouths to them. At least this way I’ll get fed.” The boy, Barra, was trembling, his voice breaking. He was all bony knees and wrists, too big for his worn-out clothes. He looked half-starved.

“He doesn’t want to do it, Sim,” said the girl. “I hate it too, but if joining the stormtroopers keeps him alive, don’t we all want that?”

“I’d rather be dead,” muttered Sim.

“I hate the First Order too. You know I do!” said Barra.  “But I can’t see any way we’re ever getting out of here. At least as a stormtrooper they’ll let me live…”

“What if you have to arrest us? Would you do it?” asked the girl.

Sim lined up beside her, scowling at Barra. “Yeah. Would you space us, if they ordered you to?”

They looked ready to fight again.

“Hey kids, maybe you’d feel better with some food in your stomachs,” said Rey. “And I can tell you about a stormtrooper who is a friend of mine. He looks a lot like you and he is a good man. The best I’ve ever met. He came from here, actually.”

Three pairs of eyes fixed on her. There was a muttered consultation. She gathered they were meant to be in class or doing some kind of work.  

“We won’t be missed.”

“They’ll just think we were called into detention again.”

“Unless Barra tells on us….” said Sim. Barra gave him a shove, but it wasn’t unfriendly.

“Shut up about it. You know I won’t.”

“Okay, follow me then,” said Rey. She knew she could order whatever food she liked from her room. The server droids would not question if she asked for double helpings of everything.

Rey’s escort fell in behind them as they made their way back to her quarters.

“Those hold-rats turn up everywhere,” growled one of the guards.

“You’ll be glad of them when you want somebody to run a private message,” said another.

“Who are they?” asked the girl, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

“My guards. I’m a prisoner here too. My name is Rey. What’s yours?”

“Kezia.”

Half an hour later they were all sitting in Rey’s room around a table loaded with plates of food. It was clear the children had not eaten well in a long time. The First Order had no use for them and kept them on short rations.

“We live in one of the cargo holds with the other families that came here by mistake,” Sim told her.

“Sometimes they make us help the droids. Cargo and stuff, or packing things,” said Kezia. “Then we run away.”

“We’re supposed to go to the education pods,” said Sim. “But we don’t always.” Soon he was telling Rey about their adventures. They stole stuff, mainly food, and explored the system of maintenance tubes. Little scavengers, and gutsy too. Rey found herself smiling more than she had in weeks.

“The three-eighths magnawrench is the most useful,” she told them. “It’ll do anything up to decking plate screws. You’d be surprised how often the galley has one — they need them to open those big containers of freeze-dried food. So next time you sneak in there…”

“So long as our brother the stormtrooper doesn’t rat on on us…” said Sim.

“Drop it, Sim. Dad says you court grudges like you want to marry them,” said Kezia. Sim bristled.

Rey tried to defuse the tension by telling them about FN-2187. The stormtrooper who threw off all his training and escaped. The children listened open-mouthed.

“Somehow he knew what was right, and the First Order didn’t manage to take that away from him. I don’t know if he’s the long-lost brother you’re looking for, but you look so alike that you could well be from the same people.”

Just then there was a knock on the door and Kylo walked in. He stopped short, looking from Rey to the children. His eyes took in the pile of plates on the table. The two boys stared at Kylo’s mask in terror and Kezia ducked her head so her hair covered the damaged side of her face.

“What’s all this?” he said, clearly annoyed.

“I made some friends,” said Rey.

“Some choice of friends.”

“We have a lot in common. What with them being prisoners and all.”

“Well, get them out of here! I want to talk to you.”

The moment Kylo stepped away from the door the children attempted to bolt past him. He shot his hand out with a flick of Force energy and Kezia stopped dead, unable to move. He grabbed her chin and tilted her head up so he could see her face. Sim spun round and took her arm, trying to pull her away before losing his nerve at the sight of Kylo towering over them.

“What’s this?” demanded Kylo.

Rey was standing beside them before she even knew she was going to move, and her Force energy flared up against Kylo’s. “You know what it is, Kylo. That’s Hux’s deal. She’s paid the price for what I did. Leave her alone.”

Kylo looked down at her for a long moment, then turned back to the girl who bore the same scar as him. “They didn’t do a very good job of healing it.”

“She doesn’t have magical Force powers like you or I, Kylo, so no. Nobody thought she was worth it.”

“But you do,” he said flatly. “You hardly _know_ them Rey. If you meddle in their lives, you’ll only make it worse.”

Rey shrugged. She couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a statement of fact. “I can’t see the future, Kylo. But I know the right thing to do when the choice is in front of me.”

“What if I healed her?” said Kylo. “What would you do for me?”

“Can you really do that?” asked Rey, trying to buy time. His offer could mean….anything.

“I can try. But if I do, you will agree to train with me for a week, and to eat with me every evening.”

Rey rocked back on her heels. It seemed a strange deal. She wondered whether he’d take his helmet off to eat. Of course he would.

“All right,” she said. “But you must promise not to tell Hux. Any of you,” she said, raising her voice to include the boys. Barra was being held in the doorway by one of the stormtrooper guards; he released him and the boy came in at Rey’s beckoning. Kezia followed the conversation silently, swallowing nervously. Rey took her other arm and led her over to the couch. She could feel her shaking.

“Lie down,” instructed Kylo. He knelt next to her head. The girl did as he asked, breathing in short pants of terror and looking over at Rey in mute appeal.

“It’s okay. He’s got…he did it to me, when I was hurt,” said Rey. Then she had an idea. “Kylo, can you show me how it’s done?”

He patted the floor next to him. “I’ve never taught anyone. I’ve been taught how to heal my own injuries, but healing others isn’t really part of my training.”

“Why am I not surprised,” muttered Rey, sitting beside him.

“How I’ve been taught is by reaching along the Force bond when Snoke is doing whatever he’s trying to teach me. I can’t pay attention to you and heal her at the same time, so you’ll just have to do your best. Wait til I’ve started otherwise you’ll distract me.”

Kylo held his hand over Kezia’s face. Her eyes fluttered shut. Rey reached over and pulled her hair gently away from the scar. She felt the Force start to move around her, something big and warm flexing its muscles. Slowly she reached out with her Force senses to learn what Kylo was doing.

Immediately it was obvious how much she’d been shielding herself from him. Now she’d let down her barrier, Kylo’s mind was glaringly present to her; a buzzing, humming block of Force and feelings. The engine of his thoughts. She’d worked on plenty of engines before. She wasn’t going to take the casing off this one though,even if its distempered workings made her mechanic’s instincts itch.

Her business right now was Kezia. Again it helped her to think of engines. Kylo was doing something with the Force, and it reminded her of the way she’d been taught to calibrate the magnetorcs that fed a hyperdrive. They had a good sound to them when they were running properly. She sensed Kylo moulding the Force in some way, making everything come into harmony. Her blurry awareness of Kezia sharpened. She imagined her own hands shadowing Kylo’s, working on some imaginary machine. Adjusting things, finding the sweet spot. She knew she’d done it correctly when she felt Kezia’s physical being flash into complete focus to her Force senses. Kezia’s body was a marvellous thing, pulsing with the intricate systems of life. Rey didn’t even think as she twined her own Force with Kylo’s, reaching into the broken place they both sensed at the same time.

 _Do you know what to do?_ asked Kylo inside her mind. Rey held up an imaginary pair of hands, each finger tipped with a shining tool that she didn’t examine too closely. She trusted they were the tools she would need to fix Kezia, just as she trusted herself to know the right wrench for fixing things in real life.

“It’ll drain you,” he warned, and wrapped his Force around hers like somebody steadying a labourer for a long haul. She hadn’t time to object to the intimacy before they were plunged into the work. It was dazzling and exhilarating and, as Kylo had warned her, draining. Cells were tiny things, but making them dance to a different tune, making them change and _move_ was hard. Somewhere between directing traffic at lightspeed and hauling rocks. And subtle: they had to pursue the certainty of what was _right_ for this damaged flesh. Let it tell them the way things should go.

Some time later they were done. Rey leaned back against the coffee table, utterly wrung out. She waited a moment before opening her eyes to see the results. She gasped. Nothing marred the rich dark gloss of Kezia’s face now. The perfect full curves of her cheeks shone, and the slightly damp skin of her eyelids was delicate and new, fringed with thick unbroken lashes.

Kezia’s brothers crowded around them. “Kezia, wake up!” said Sim. “Wait til you see yourself. You’ll cry happy tears!” _He_ was crying happy tears, Rey noticed. Her eyes were damp too.

“Can you see out of your eye?” asked Barra. “Show us!”

Kezia stretched, waking. She reached up with one hand and ran it over her face. Then her eyes flew open. Two beautiful dark eyes, staring up at them all with amazement. She gave them a wide white grin and sat up, laughing and crying at the same time.

Only then did Rey notice the warm weight of Kylo’s arm around her shoulder. He was leaning on her. Her smile faltered. He reached up a gloved hand and wiped a tear off her cheek.

“Good work,” he said. “You’re a fast learner.”

“It didn’t feel like learning. I was just sort of following you,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes hurriedly. Kylo was so close she could feel his breaths on her forehead, turned into cool licks of air by the helmet. She started to crawl out from under his arm. He seemed too tired to move, either to stop her or help her

“You should go back to your quarters now,” she told the children. They’d helped Kezia up and were standing in the middle of Rey’s room, stroking her healed face and cooing while she whispered “I can see! Both eyes!”

“We’ll get in trouble for being up here,” said Sim.

“I’ll have the guards escort them back to their quarters then,” said Kylo. He rolled himself tiredly onto his feet and went to the door to give the order. The guards saluted and two of them took the children between them.

And then Kylo and Rey were alone.

“I am absolutely starv —,” said Kylo, then cocked his head at Rey quickly. _That time you were trapped in that big hulk north of Kelvin Ridge and didn’t eat for a week_ ….“I mean, I’m as ravenous as a rathtar.”

To her surprise, so was Rey, despite having eaten not half an hour before.

Kylo waved a disparaging hand at the empty plates on Rey’s table. “Ugh. Looks like the cantina’s doing Moofburger Mystery Special again. It’s just soypro.”

“They’re growing kids, Kylo. They just need to eat a lot.”

“I need nerf steaks. Come on, I can get some.”

By the time they got to Kylo’s room, Rey’s legs were shaking and Kylo had slowed from his usual power-walk. He went straight to his comms console and snapped orders into it. Nerf steaks and a whole lot of other things Rey had never heard of. Then he opened a cupboard and threw a gigantic gaudy packet in Rey’s direction. The packet had pictures of a happy Wookiee family eating round a campfire. Rey couldn’t read the name, which was in Kashykk, except for the line in Galactic Basic that said “Barbecue Flavour!” in cheery letters. She ripped it open and dug into the giant yellow kibbles inside.

“These look like the kind of thing Chewie would eat,” said Rey through a crunchy mouthful. Kylo muttered something and slammed down a chopping board. “Sorry, I didn’t think,” she muttered. Dinner with Kylo would be nothing but conversational minefields. She turned her back on him and examined the room. She’d been too beaten up to notice many details, other than its overall dark and featureless aspect. Everything functional, dull and blocky.

She walked around, feeling the fat leather arms of the squat sofas and the shiny tube legs of the tables. There were no pictures on the walls and no ornaments, nor any shelves to put them on. There was a desk with a datapad, and a kind of plinth with a repulsive-looking half-melted helmet.

“You have a thing about helmets,” she said.

“Don’t touch that.”

She drifted over to a sort of basic galley kitchen. Its tools looked stylish as well as practical, though Rey couldn’t imagine what most of them did. Apart from the knives. He had an impressive array of those, and Rey cast longing eyes over them, not just because they looked like they could slice out Kylo’s heart in one clean cut.

“Stop looking at my knives.”

“Do you cook?”

“Sometimes. I wasn’t always a Knight of Ren,” he said, in a tone that invited no further discussion. He took a jug of something out of the nanowave and poured it into two cups. It smelled divine.

“What is that?” said Rey, moving over to look at it. Some sort of frothy brown liquid.

“Never had this? Hoth chocolate.” She hesitated, and he took her hand and folded it around one of the cups. “Best thing to revive you after you’ve done hard work with the Force.”

She backed away and lifted the cup to her lips. It tasted as good as it smelled.

_Hey Finn. Remember your old boss? The man who tried to kill you? I’m having a drink with him…_

“Do stormtroopers get to drink Hoth chocolate?” she asked.

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Nothing,” she said, and eyed her cup. She was doing this purely for tactical purposes, she told herself. Know your enemy, lull him into a false sense of security.

And speaking of knowing your enemy….

Kylo raised his hands and unlatched his mask, lifting it off in one smooth movement. His black curls spilled down as he cocked his head on one side, dark eyes looking out challengingly from under heavy brows. She had forgotten the intensity of those eyes. A face that gave everything away, and yet remained a mystery.

“I won’t, as you suggested the other day, drink it through a straw.” He paused, waiting for her to mock him. His full lips peeled back slightly as though ready to retort if she did. But she said nothing, and after a moment he relaxed. “I wasn’t sure that sort of healing was possible. I’ve only ever done it on fresh injuries. You must have a knack for it.”

“So we both learned something today,” she answered, unwilling to concede whatever he was arguing. Yes, he had things to teach her, and maybe not all of them were bad. Who else had taught her anything at all?

One end of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile and he raised his cup to her in a toast.

She raised her cup back. She was drinking with the enemy.  Sweet reviving warmth, slipping easily down her throat. If this was treachery, it sure tasted good.

  
  
  



	10. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey made a deal, and now she has to have dinner with Kylo.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

Kylo was absolutely fascinated by the way she gnawed the bones of her nerf steak. The neat white tips of her teeth appeared as she stripped off the sinews and gristle. Finally she sucked out the marrow. He’d used a knife and fork, and the remains of his meal were a wreckage. Rey’s plate was polished and by the time she’d finished with the bone, it was too.

They were sitting opposite each other on couches in his room, with the table between them. Rey had her feet tucked neatly under her. Kylo was sprawled comfortably with one foot hanging over the armrest. He watched Rey finger-combing her hair and securing it back in its characteristic buns.

“Why do you wear it like that? Is it a Jakku thing?”

“I always have,” she said. After a while she added shyly, “I thought my family might not recognise me if I changed it. After, you know. After a few years went by.”

 _Years and years and years._ Kylo’s heart did that horrible squeezing thing it only seemed to do around Rey. It was easy to fantasise about Rey when she wasn’t right in front of him. After all, he’d as good as touched her, naked and wet, through the Force bond. But in the flesh, she confounded him.  Any number of plans he’d had for being debonair or forceful or otherwise getting her into his bed shrivelled up and blew away. Again.

But she’d moved on, and was examining the controls on the side of his kaffa table. Of course she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fiddle with something mechanical. Kylo counted under his breath to see how long it took. He’d got to five when she found the activator button. Rey’s reaction was even better than he’d hoped. When the dejarik figures sprang to life over the table she threw herself backwards with a kind of muffled shriek. Kylo laughed and she gave him a filthy look.

“What, did you think you’d activated some kind of Sith warrior programme?” he said.

“Something like that,” she muttered. She prowled around the table as though the figures were real adversaries. The holomonsters ran through their warm-up routines, stretching, brandishing their weapons, and doing little war dances. Rey drew closer, fascinated.

“Oh! I see! That’s a Savrip, that’s a …. a… Ghhk…and that must be Grimtaash the Molator!”

“You play dejarik?” asked Kylo.

“A little,” she said cagily. Kylo laughed.

“What?” she said innocently.

“I can recognise a grifter a mile off.” Anybody could, if they’d spent enough time around Han Solo.

“I don’t cheat!”

“Not exactly,” he said, and made his voice go falsetto. “Oh, I only play a little, Mr Spacer Captain, but I _do_ enjoy it!” He copied that tentative flutter he’d seen her do with her eyelashes when she was uncertain about something. Rey’s mouth dropped open and then she blushed furiously. Kylo smiled. “How many people have played dejarik with you and left with empty pockets and a cargo-hold of regrets?”

“A few,” she admitted, grinning broadly for a moment before turning serious again. “But I didn’t have my own board. We used to make our pieces out of scrap.” She reached over the table and passed her hand through the holomonsters. Light flared and rippled across her skin. “We’d get the little kids to act out the moves since we didn’t have holos.”

“Let’s play,” said Kylo.

She looked up at him sharply. “We’re not friends, you know.”

“Enemies play dejarik too.”  He sat by the table and ran his fingers over the controls so the holomonsters separated into two opposing lines. The Monnok piece bounced on its stubby toes and spun its staff as though sensing action. Rey couldn’t hide her pleasure in the way the pieces moved.

“I’ll play black,” said Kylo.

“Fine. I always play white.”  She took the controls and made her pieces hop and skip around to see what they could do, before lining them up on their starting positions. Kylo grinned and sent his Kintan strider ravening across the board. Rey responded with a disdainful “pffft!” and skipped her Ghhk around him to trip him up with a swipe of its long arms — easily avoided — and a nudge from its stubby tail, which the Kintan strider did not expect.

They played quietly. While Rey was focusing on her moves, Kylo could observed her unnoticed. Fine tendrils of her hair escaped their ties, and when she was thinking she had the habit of blowing them out of her face with a little puff of air. She bared her teeth when she was winning in a kind of happy snarl. She blinked a lot when something surprised her.

“I can tell you’ve played against a lot of spacers. You play spacer-style,” said Kylo after a while.

“There’s other styles?” she asked. Her slug rolled itself up in a ball and shot across the board unexpectedly.

“That move I haven’t seen before,” he said. “But yes. There’s tournament style, which is a bit more flashy. And the First Order officers tend to play differently too. Slower, and they set more traps.”

“Who taught you?” she asked, taking her attention off the board to give him a probing look. A little brush of Force energy pushed up against him. It was too easy to forget she had it, when she used it so little.

“Stop it,” he said sharply. She had to know it was Han who taught him dejarik, and sabacc, and how to spot a grifter. Things he’d learned in a hundred seedy spaceport bars.

His suspicions were correct. Rey sprung three traps on him at once while he was thinking of his father. She’d only brought it up to distract him.

“Let’s talk about _your_ family, shall we?” he said.

“Let’s not,” she said repressively, and he didn’t push it. They played on in silence. After an hour they reached a stalemate. Both of them pushed back from the table and stretched until their shoulders popped and crackled. Kylo smiled at their identical gestures. Rey grimaced.

“So, how else do they pass the time on Jakku?” he asked.

“Ah, the songliners.” She brightened at the memory. “They always start like this. ‘Let me tell you how I got here. I came over by Kelvin Ridge, north by northwest, and sang The Children of Druzhen Yah. That story took me to the Pink Granites.…’”

“What do you mean, it took them to the Pink Granites?” asked Kylo.

“Well, we have the hazy days on Jakku. Ri’ia’s Sighs, the little wind that raises up the fine-sand.  You can’t see the stars to steer by. We use sat-nav if we have it, but the songliners have always used a compass and measured the distances by the story they tell. So they’ll say ‘I went south over the Sinking Sands from the Black Peak, telling the Last Dance of the First Gods. When it was finished I was at Tikki-tikki. I turned south-east and told Merick Lies about His Speederbike to get me to the Redoubt.’  Eventually they ask you which one you want to hear, once they’ve laid out what they’ve got to offer.”

“Do they actually work? As a measure of distance?”

“They say they do. I told myself The War Between the Insects once to get from Niima to Moley’s Wreck, but I could do that run in my sleep so it doesn’t prove much.”

Kylo snorted skeptically, but then he caught the image of a sand-coloured girl in a soft umber twilight, face wrapped against the blowing sand. The tingle of adventure. She had her water bottle, but she could still die out here if she got truly lost.

“Anyway, you wanted to hear one. I’ll tell you about a girl called Lionheart. Her hold-family didn’t like her name. ‘Why couldn’t you be called Salt? That’s useful stuff,’ said her Toydarian father.”

“Wait, she was Toydarian?”

“No, she was human. But most kids have hold-families, at least for a while.”

“Hold-families?”

“Don’t you have those? Your parents give you to a hold-family to raise for a while, so you can learn different things, and raise one of their children or care for their elders in return.  I spent two seasons with the Teedos.”

“Why?”

“Dowsing for minerals. They said I had the gift, but now I know it was probably the Force. Anyway, Lionheart’s hold-sister said she should be called Straight Wings In the Eastern Wind. Lionheart said that was a very pretty name, but she would stick with the name her birth family gave her, as there must have been a reason for it. So, one day they went out mining…”

“So Unkar Plutt didn’t raise you?”

Rey burst out laughing. “Unkar couldn’t raise a child! If he had children he’d probably keep them in a water tank and feed them wrigglers or something. No, he got a human hold-family for me, at least until I was a bit bigger and could look after myself more.”

“What happened to them?”

“They ran the ore-smelter but one day it blew up and they had to leave.” Rey fell silent, fiddling with her steak bone. He could sense her sadness, but all she said was, “They were very good to me. They had a lot of children and always acted like having one more was no trouble at all.”

Kylo never found out what happened to Lionheart. He was too curious about Jakku.

“So people stop fighting during the big sandstorms?” he asked.

“Mostly. You can’t help who you dislike. But sandstorm guests should always be made welcome. There’s rules about that. The teedos say that Ri’ia makes the sandstorms so that people will be forced to live in harmony with each other. Unfortunately once everyone’s sitting peacefully around their hearth, telling stories and sharing food, Ri’ia takes pity on them and stops the storm. And as quickly as that the truce is over and it’s everyone for themselves again.”

“If the sandstorm lasted too long, you’d be forced to eat each other,” said Kylo. “What do the teedos say about that?”

“The sort of clever and annoying children who ask those questions are the last to be invited to the food-pot, and get the smallest portions,” said Rey promptly. It sounded like the voice of experience.

They sat in silence for a while.  

“So, those dreams….” said Kylo at last. “Did you have them before you went to Ahch-to?”

“No. I thought they were something to do with Luke. The dream temple appeared when he slept. But I’ve kept having them since…”

“What did Luke say about them?”

Rey’s gaze darkened and she shifted uncomfortably. Kylo reached out stealthily with the Force, brushing up against her mind. She flashed him an angry look.

“Did he teach you _anything?”_

Rey glared at the floor and finally answered in a low voice, “Luke wouldn’t speak to me at all. He _couldn’t._ He…there was something wrong with his mind.”

“What? You spent weeks on that island and he didn’t train you?”

Rey clenched her jaw and went on staring at the floor. Instinct — or the Force — had told him her time on Ahch-to hadn’t gone well, but this was worse than he’d thought. Worse for her, anyway. Snoke, on the other hand, would be thrilled.

“He didn’t fight like somebody who’d lost his mind when I faced him that night,” said Kylo.

Rey scowled and he thought she would clam up at the memory of her last night on Ahch-to. But her curiosity won out. The mysteries of Luke must have been eating at her too.

“Luke could still do things with the Force. He’d fight me. Trying to keep me off that place, the Daylight Gate. But the rest of the time it was as though his mind was broken in pieces and he wanted to keep it that way in case he, I don’t know, attracted the wrong attention. Snoke was looking for him, wasn’t he?”

“The Supreme Leader is anxious to find him, yes.”

Rey curled her lip at the title. “Supreme Leader, sure. Your beloved _Master_ should leave Luke alone. He’s just a frightened old man.”

“And yet Luke did something I didn’t even know was possible. He conjured up that dream place and went through into it.”

“Maybe you have to be crazy to do that,” said Rey bitterly. “Anyway, he’s safe from your lot there.”

“Is he, though?” asked Kylo. His Force senses told him Rey was wrong. She seemed to pick up his thought. She chewed a fingernail, getting more and more agitated.

Finally she said haltingly, “I thought maybe he’d been there before, and something drove him mad. After all, he knew how to get there, but he didn’t try it until you left him no choice.” She gave him an angry look. “Anyway, forget it. He’s out of your hair, you should be happy.”

“Except the dreams, Rey! We both have them. Doesn’t it feel like we’re being pushed to do something?”

“They want to turn me into you. Your murderous apprentice. Did you ever hear of the Rule of Two?”

“Yes of course. I’m surprised you know it.”

“Leia told me. She knows more about Jedi and Sith history than she lets on.”

“Yeah, because being a senator with Force powers is such a bad _look,”_ said Kylo savagely. “Wouldn’t want to frighten the _constituents,_ would we?”

“Whereas everyone knows about _your_ Force powers, and look how beloved you are!” said Rey.

Kylo felt his temper rising. Rey made it hard to stick to the topic, but he made an effort not to be sidetracked. “But even if the dream were some kind of Master-and-Apprentice thing, the Sith’s Rule of Two wasn’t a public ceremony. It was just assassination,” he said.

“I bet that’s what the dream is about though. You’re supposed to train me, and I’m supposed to kill you to take your place.”

“The Rule of Two is honest, at least,” he said. “Only excellence can survive.”

“I’m not going to do it.”

Kylo sighed. “Look at you. So young and so wise. You don’t know _what_ you’d do, Rey. If you had to.” She curled her lip at him and he got up, irritated by her disdain. That smooth brow of hers unmarked by guilt or shame. His shoulders prickled as he walked to his galley and he cast a quick glance over his shoulder. It would be stupid to trust her, whatever she said. She was still sitting curled on the sofa, looking troubled. He checked on his kitchen knives — all still there — and busied himself heating up some more Hoth chocolate.

She took the cup from his hands and stared broodingly at it before drinking. He sat opposite her with his own drink.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, and he knew at once what she meant. He opened his mouth to speak, and stopped himself. He couldn’t understand his reckless urge to talk about it. There was no evidence that any confessions he made to Rey would receive mercy. Finally he said, “You seem to have a very rosy view of families, Rey.”

“What did Han do to deserve being murdered?” asked Rey promptly.

“You think parents always love their children, and care about them, and understand them. You think they always put their children first. Well, I have news for you,” he said.

“You didn’t answer my question!”

“It would take too long to tell,” he said bitterly.

“He didn’t put you first, so you murdered him. That’s what I’m hearing,” she said.

“I chose to serve where I was wanted.”

“Snoke was willing to make more of a fuss of you, you mean. Told you how great and special you were.”

“My father hated my Force powers. So you got that bit right.”

“Isn’t it convenient for Snoke that it’s not your Master you’re supposed to strike down, but your father?” asked Rey.

“It’s not like that! We’re not Siths. Snoke doesn’t believe in the Rule of Two.”

“I can see how that benefits Snoke.”

“Snoke has plans for the Galaxy. Which, you might have noticed, could do with some improvements. Do you really like the fact that people like Unkar Plutt get to run things? There’s a thousand worlds in the Galaxy that have no rules to protect anyone except the wealthy. The Republic in any of its forms has never had the strength or the guts to enforce laws that would make things any fairer!” Kylo realised he was shouting.

Rey’s head was lowered as if fighting a strong wind, but she was still prepared to argue. “I didn’t know Snoke was so interested in poor people.”

“He’s interested in peace. The First Order wants to bring law to the Galaxy, but they can only do it through war. Millions will die. Snoke could do it through the Force.”

“Why doesn’t he do it then? Just take over?”

“He needs more power.”

“Your power,” guessed Rey. “But it isn’t enough.”

“Come on, Rey,” said Kylo, lowering his voice. “You saw what we were able to accomplish together when we healed that girl. That’s not…if you’d studied the Force, you’d know how difficult it was. Snoke won’t let you waste your powers. You’ll get an education and you’ll have a place of honour with us.”

She sat up, her bright eyes studying his face. He could feel her testing the Force bond between them, sifting his words and testing the truth of them. And he believed, he truly believed what he said. It shook her confidence.

“I’m tired,” is all she said. She stood up, and her stiff back suggested there was no point arguing further with her that night. He walked her to the door and enjoyed the brief moment when she was almost in his arms as he reached around her to open it. She looked up at him nervously.

“I’ll see you at training tomorrow,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”

She studied his face for a second and it was all he could do to restrain himself from bending down to brush her lips with his. She was that close.

She backed away hurriedly through the door and stepped into the midst of her waiting escort.

“Sweet dreams,” she said bitterly. He watched her walk away.

  



	11. Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey enjoys training with Kylo more than she expected. Even she can't deny how beautifully he moves with a weapon in his hands.
> 
> * * *

The next morning Rey woke up with a maddening itch around her neck. It was the kill collar. Something had got under it and was irritating her skin. She eased a finger under it cautiously to scratch, trying not to imagine what might happen if she triggered it. As far as she knew it was not something she could activate herself but still, every time she touched it she saw Hux’s cruel smile as he tossed the trigger and caught it.

She was remembering the events of the day before when it occurred to her that healing Kezia had been a kind of mechanical repair. Force or no Force, they’d dealt with Kezia’s body as a mechanism. They’d tuned their Force senses to the point where they could see Kezia’s cells and instruct them what to do as though they were obedient machines.

What if the living Force could act the same way on mechanical things?

But of course it could! She’d seen Kylo open a door by gesturing at it with his hand. It was his will and the Force that moved the door, but at the same time, a circuit had to close, and an electric current had to flow. It was a mechanical thing, like the collar around her neck. And Rey was a mechanic.

First she had to understand it. She put herself into as much of a meditative Force trance as she’d been able to learn. But the knowledge that came in most useful was her memory of dowsing for the Teedos on Jakku. It was a miniature version of what she’d done when she sensed the veins of metal or minerals hidden deep under the sands.

The kill collar must have circuits. She felt for them. Silicon. Copper. She knew those well. Iridium. It was as though the Force gave them a taste. Gradually she sensed all the elements that were there. But they were fuzzy. Rey couldn’t figure out how to tune her awareness any more sharply.

After a few hours she had to give up, exhausted.

But she’d try again, she decided. It was surely just a matter of practice.

There came a knock at her door, and one of the stormtroopers reminded her that she was expected at the training facility. She slogged over there, tired after her morning’s work.

Kylo was alone, a black silhouette in the glare of the lights.

“Where are the rest of the Knights?” asked Rey.

“I’m finding other assignments for them,” he said, to her relief.

He showed her combat moves and poses that flowed from one to another like water. She mirrored them as best she could. She learned to open her link to the Force so it could help her follow the patterns he set. They moved in silence apart from their breathing and their footfalls on the soft matting, and the sharp clack of the wooden swords. By some unspoken agreement, they didn’t mock each other; it would have interfered with the work. Rey wanted to learn.

She could not deny that he moved beautifully. She had not wanted to come to the room where she’d been beaten almost unconscious; she did not want to face Kylo and his uncertain moods. But here she was, training lightsaber  in hand, and there he was, covering the ground between them with deceptive, easy grace, moving his sword up to meet hers. Every time, her heart rose to the challenge. She did not dislike fighting.

She still tended to lunge and jab at Kylo. His responses always carried a sense of style that she struggled to imitate. There was no question that he showed off for her, twirling his sword with casual arrogance in one hand as he strolled back to his starting point. She wanted to scoff, yet his powerful grace held her transfixed.

She despised his showing off and the many things he did to prop up his image:  his overdone black costume, his aggressively spartan living quarters, the intimidating design of his black ship. At least for training he left off his helmet. Its mute hostility was another prop  she could do without.

Rey had known about the fear at the heart of him since the first time they met, and how it drove his desire to seem something greater than he was. But sometimes when he moved with the sword, he was the real thing. No posturing, but a series of exquisite poses that she wished she could freeze in time and examine at leisure. The way he kicked out with his stride, putting his feet down with such gravity that it was as though he claimed the whole Galaxy merely by resting his weight there for an instant.

They began to spar, and she had to draw on the Force more to keep up. Yet there was no fear in her: her Force and his danced together, matched opposites, and she had a strong feeling that this should be so.

There was a moment when he’d succeeded in knocking her down, and he held out his hand to help her up. As she took it, she glanced in the mirrors that covered one wall.Time seemed to slow down. For a long instant she saw Kylo and herself as one creature poised in tension against itself. His black-clad arm made one long line with her white-skinned one, their hands fitting together perfectly at the join.

She wished she had the words to describe it.

Rey came to train with Kylo every day, as she had promised. Increasingly, she was lost for words: what to say, when they stood eye to eye, every muscle straining, and Kylo’s intense stare seeming to urge her both to defeat and to victory? He wanted more from her. She looked at the white line of the scar across his face, and remembered why she’d given it to him. She owed him nothing else.

But she fell asleep thinking of those eyes; the exotic upward tilt of their lower lids, which looked like they should belong to somebody good humoured. But the upper lids swept down lazily under a pronounced epicanthic fold that gave his eyes a narrowed, triangular shape. They made for a distrustful look, like a wild animal, especially when he flicked her one of his sideways glances.

He neither laughed nor scowled in training, merely looking satisfied when she mastered a new skill. He would only relax afterwards.

“Come and have Hoth chocolate with me,” he said.

“I’m…no, I have to shower.” She regretted it the moment she said it. His eyes lit up for a minute. Rey blushed. She barely needed the Force to read his mind. Something lewd about her in the shower...

“You’ll have dinner with me then.”

And she did, though she mostly sat quietly, pretending the food was all she cared about.

“Why do you train me? Do you want me to be able to defeat you?” she asked once. Starkiller didn’t count, she’d realised: it wouldn’t be an equal match now Kylo was in perfect health and on more of an even keel mentally.

“We’re the only ones left, Rey. We don’t let power like this go untaught. It’d be a tragic waste.”

“I’m not on your side.”

“Can’t you imagine it though, Rey? The Galaxy at peace? With your power, you could lead, and people would love you.”

“Where does Snoke fit into this?” she asked.

“Behind the scenes,” said Kylo frankly. “He has no desire to be the centre of attention.”

“And you do,” said Rey. Kylo merely blushed and grinned at her, as though she’d discovered some charming foible of his. She bared her teeth at him but he just outright laughed.

“You’re so _good,_ Rey. Don’t you get tired of it?”

Afterwards Rey had to admit that training and dinner with Kylo gave her days some structure, and if she was not exactly thankful, it was better than aimlessly pacing the halls of the Finalizer.  She slept better, and as the nights passed, her  dreams changed. Still the strange temple, but now it was a day of soft rain. Younglings walked the causeway two by two, singing, and there were no stains on the white stones. They wore flower crowns, and where the altar had been in the other dreams, there was a group of elders, men and women in long flowing white robes. They bowed and offered something to the children, who bowed back and took whatever it was, holding it in front of them to admire or clutching it to their chest. Whatever it was, it was precious to them, and they left the temple proud and smiling. There was a crowd, but the mood was different. Joyful.

When the dream had come more than once, she brought it up over dinner.

“Are your dreams still the same?” she asked Kylo. He stopped cutting his meat and looked searchingly at her.

“No. Yours?”

She described what she’d seen and he nodded.

“I saw it too. I thought it was like a graduation. It looked like they were given books or something.”

“What could it mean?”

“Maybe a different time in its history. The Temple, the way it was meant to be?” guessed Kylo. “A place of learning?”

The next day as they were sparring again in the training room, Rey watched Kylo run through a new form. There was something about a gesture he always made, the way he planted his feet to begin. There was a history behind every movement. Not only years of training but a whole culture that Rey had been excluded from. Suddenly she began to cry. She dropped her training sword and sat down. He came over and sat down next to her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She just sniffed for a moment, cringing at the part of herself that wanted him to put an arm around her. She was perfectly capable of crying on her own, if she had to cry at all. She inched away and started to talk as well as she could between her tears.

“It’s just…I watched you prepare that move, and I just knew everything about it had been passed down for thousands of years. Teacher to student. All the things you do that are unnecessary, but still part of the style. All part of one big thing, a learning…” she struggled for words. “A way of doing things that doesn’t even exist any more. All the things that were known, and aren’t any more.”

Kylo nodded.  “I know. That’s why I train you. I don’t want it all to die away. Nobody knows the ways of the Force now. Apart from Snoke, who can remember so much that’s gone by….” He took her hand and squeezed it. His gauntlets felt less personal than the his bare hands, with their big knuckles and knotted veins and scars. They were  still too much.

“Stop taking my hand!” She snatched it back and hid her face in her palms. Kylo scrunched himself ridiculously small, trying to get down low enough to see her expression. Any moment now he’d try and pull her hand away and look into her face like one of the Kezedar children . His shoulder touched hers, and it was strangely comforting. Large as he was, he still seemed to understand how sometimes a person just needed to curl up very small and block out the world.

“Stop fighting it,” he said gently. “You belong here.”

Rey shook her head. History was so big and she was so tiny. How to make sense of her place in it, with only Kylo and Snoke for guides? She missed Luke. Crazy as he was, he’d stood for something better.

She stuttered something about that to Kylo, trying to make distance between them. To her surprise he didn’t snap at her, merely saying Luke hadn’t had the will to fulfil his own destiny.

“It’s all about power for you, isn’t it?” said Rey. “And you think only the Dark will bring it to you. I’ll tell you what,  though. When we spar and I set my Force against yours, I don’t see Light against Dark. You’re dark in yourself, with the choices you’ve made. But the Force that comes to you is neither Dark nor Light. It’s neutral.”

Kylo got to his feet abruptly. He picked up both training swords and walked away from her.

“Training’s over for today,” he said.

  
  



	12. The Kezedar Kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finds she has friends on the Finalizer. Time for some subterfuge.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

The Kezedar children took to turning up at Rey’s rooms whenever they could, which was fairly often. The children were usually on their way to drop off some illicit gift between the ranks of the Finalizer, or to convey a message between crewmembers that might cause embarrassment if it got to the wrong ears. Sometimes they brought their younger siblings, who toddled around drooling on the furniture and pestering her for food. At first she was surprised they were allowed to visit. Surely her stormtrooper guards must report everything she did to Hux. But of course, the friendlier they became, the harder it would be to risk their safety. They were her hostages. 

One of her guards even dropped them off to her one morning. Before he turned to go, while the rest of the escort were doing their shift changeover, he lowered his head to her and asked, “Is it true you knew FN-2187?”

“Yes, I do know him,”  said Rey. “He’s a brave man and a hero to the Resistance. He’s also my dearest friend, so shut up about traitors. ”

“I wouldn’t call him that ma’am,” said the stormtrooper, his voice a soft buzz through the helmet. “Did he survive Starkiller Base?”

“He was in a medbay  when I last saw him, and expected to recover,” said Rey quietly. She reached out to the stormtrooper with her Force senses. FN-4942. He would have known Finn. He didn’t feel hostile to her. 

That was the trouble with the Force. It could tell you so much, but until you learned to focus, it was simply overwhelming. And so you went through life tuning it out, and missing vital clues as a result. 

Over the next few days she found that she could recognise FN-4942 through the Force before she read his code badge. He had a glow about him. Now that she knew how to look, she could find it in others. The blank masks of the stormtroopers hid their diversity. Some of them hated and feared her. Others pitied her, or admired her. There was sympathy hidden even behind the cold faces of certain officers.

“I heard they gave him a name,” said FN-4942 the next day at change of shift, as Rey was shooing the Kezedar kids out of her quarters. 

“Finn. We call him Finn.”

“Finn.”

“Finn would love to know where I am,” said Rey. “But I don’t know where we are.”

The stormtrooper stood silent for a moment, then turned to join the rest of his troop. Rey wondered if the stormtroopers knew where the Finalizer was anchored. It was such a self-contained world. Maybe they didn’t care. From here the rest of the galaxy seemed unreal. 

Rey could only risk the lightest brush of Force to sense what people were thinking without them noticing. Unless they happened to think of the Finalizer’s location while she was reading them, she’d never find out that way.

A few days later Rey was walking off the stiffness from another training session with Kylo. The week she'd agreed to had somehow extended to ten days. She didn’t like to ask if the Finalizer ran on a ten-day cycle. And now it was more than ten days, and she was still training with Kylo. That morning in the shower she’d had a sudden vision of Kylo’s hands effortlessly kneading the soreness out of her joints.  _ Don’t!  _ she spat along the Force bond, and caught a quick flick of guilt from Kylo. Now she strode angrily through the Finalizer while a traitorous little piece of her core tingled with warmth. She stopped at a viewport and glared at the boring little stars outside.

“Is it true that even apprentices can read minds?” asked the nearest stormtrooper guarding her. RN-4447. One of the friendlies.

“I’m not an apprentice. At least, not to him!” Rey snarled. The stormtrooper just stood there, and Rey could imagine he wasn’t very convinced. She trained with him, she had dinner with him…

But all he said was, “They say you can, but I don’t believe it’s possible! Tell me: What am I thinking?”

Angrily she stabbed in at him with the Force in a way she hadn’t attempted since her first meeting with Kylo. The stormtrooper flinched, but held onto his thought doggedly, right in the front of his mind where she couldn’t miss it.

Inner Waypoint, it was called, and it had coordinates that would put it two thirds of the way between Csilla and Rakata Prime, and sunk below the Galactic plane. Rey memorised them and gave RN-4447 a quick headshake.

“Thank you, but I don’t want to be  _ inner _ the  _ way  _ of your  _ point _ less thoughts,” she said.

The troop leader came clumping over to move them apart. “Don’t play games with her. She’s our prisoner!”

“Guest, I was told,” said Rey smartly.

“And Lord Ren’’s apprentice,” said RN-4447. Rey narrowed her eyes at him and sensed his amusement. Finn would have liked this one, she thought.

Rey ran out of stories about Finn to tell the Kezedar children. She hadn’t known him long enough. They followed her around the ship, begging for more stories about Finn, or Poe, or the Resistance. Rey caught her guards turning up the volume on their external mics so they wouldn’t miss a word.

“Everyone on the lower decks talks about Finn. They like his new name a lot,” said Sim. 

“I wish the Resistance could rescue us,” said Kezia. “But I bet they don’t even know anything about us. Not even where in the galaxy this huge ship is.”

“We’re learning about communications in stormtrooper training and you bet your ration-bickies that’s one thing we’re not allowed to know,” said Barra. “Nobody’s allowed to know where the Finalizer is, except the higher-ups. In case we give it away on the hypercomm.”

Sim glared at Barra -- any mention of his brother’s new role as a stormtrooper-in-training was likely to derail the conversation. But he merely said, “There are other people that want to get out too, and not just prisoners like us”.

“I’m not sure a Resistance rescue would help us,” said Rey. “I used to salvage old wrecks from a big space battle. There aren’t many survivors when these ships lose a fight.” Rey had seen plenty of the dead on Jakku. Luckily, nature and the weather had usually reduced them to anonymous bones. Still, there were times when the remains suggested something of the lives snuffed out by the war. 

“Plus,” she touched the collar around her neck. “If I leave the Finalizer, this thing will kill me.”

The children scowled and fell silent.  

Later at the change of shift, Rey used the noise of the approaching squad to say quietly to Barra, “I know our coordinates and the Resistance codes. If you get a chance, tell them, but make sure they know there are civilians here. We’ll have to trust them to figure out what to do.”

There was no time to say more in private, but Rey had an idea. “Kezia, next time bring those bead ties of yours and I’ll do your hair. It’s looking like a frizzle bush. Bring the young ones and I’ll do their hair too.”

The next day, no security cameras would have registered anything suspicious in Rey’s room. It was girl time, with Rey braiding Kezia’s hair into two tails with coloured beads. “This the traditional way we did it on Jakku,” she said. Barra was sitting on the other sofa, and Rey gave him a meaningful look while chatting away and stretching out Kezia’s left braid. “Ooh, Kezia’s hair is thick. There’s quite a lot of resistance here.” She combed out the loose ends of the right braid. “I’ll just finalize these bits.”

Barra looked suddenly more alert, and Rey gave him a small smile.

Rey turned to one of the smaller girls and taught her a counting game with the leftover beads. “Green beads are ones, yellow beads are tens, red beads are hundreds.”

Barra reached over and touched Kezia’s braids. “Don’t take these out. Rey’s put so much work into them!” He fingered the three sequences of beads on the right braid. “I like how you’ve coordinated the colours,” he said to Rey with a grin.

The other braid was the code to contact the Resistance, of course. Too long to teach to Barra in a whispered conversation and too risky to write down,even if she could find something to write with. Though it was all risky. Barra might not get near an unsecured comms unit during his classes, or he might succeed in calling up an attack rather than a rescue. Sometimes you just had to trust to chance. 

She shooed the children out a little later. It was time to train with Kylo again. 

  



	13. Kylo and Snoke

Snoke lived according to his own clock, of course. Even so he didn’t usually call on Kylo’s private holocomm in the early hours of the morning unless it was important. So when Kylo was woken long past midnight by the holocomm’s shrill beep, he quickly wrapped a blanket around himself and stumbled over to answer it.

“How are you getting on with the girl?” asked Snoke immediately.

“Fine,” said Kylo shortly, then tried to recover his manners with a deeper than usual bow to Snoke’s image. “Supreme Leader. Rey trains with me, and doesn’t try to kill me in the process.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Snoke. He continued to sit there, staring at Kylo.

“What can I do for you?” asked Kylo. "Master." 

“I'm calling to ask about Rey, obviously," said Snoke, and now there was more than a trace of impatience in his voice. "I want details. How powerful is she? What are her weaknesses? What is her attitude towards the First Order? Is she tempted by the Dark Side yet?”

Kylo stumbled through some description of his training with Rey and his impressions of her mental state. “She is eager to learn and she’s adapted to life on the Finalizer well enough.” He pushed down the mental image of her pacing endlessly through its corridors like a zoo animal.

“Has she really?” asked Snoke, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“She doesn’t love it here, no. But she’s starting to talk to people, and become less isolated.”

Snoke listened to everything Kylo said with an interest verging on the predatory.

“Let me know as soon as you have secured her loyalty. What I sense in the Force is most intriguing,” Snoke said at last, and signed off.

“And my progress is going just fine too, thanks,” muttered Kylo to the empty room. He dragged himself and his blanket back to bed, where he lay awake grumpily wondering what Snoke intended to do with Rey. Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts were convinced Rey would spell the end of them. Especially if she accessed the power they believed she had. They could be onto something. Snoke hadn’t mentioned the Knights of Ren in weeks.

Snoke had never told Kylo he’d passed his final test either.


	14. Rey and Snoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's feelings for Rey are pretty clear. Rey's feelings about Kylo's feelings are less clear. One thing there's no doubt about: Snoke and Rey hate each other 100 percent.
> 
> * * *

“I get bored of forms,” Rey told Kylo one day. He leapt over a low swipe of her practice sword but she kept coming, doing a second sweep with her leg that hooked his ankle. He wasn’t expecting it, but he managed to flick her sword out of her grip on his way to the floor. She dropped so one knee was on his neck and one foot pinning his sword arm. She grinned down at him.

He threw her off with a heave, flipping himself over on all fours to pin her down.

It was his turn to grin down at her. “I get bored of forms too.”

Rey's eyes widened. Something felt very strange about all this. Why was her heart suddenly beating twice as fast? Why did she imagine him settling his whole weight against her, hot and sweaty as he was? Was he using the Force bond somehow to persuade her to stop struggling? 

“Bet I’ve done more streetfighting than you,” she said, trying to muster up some outrage. She pulled one leg free and brought her ankle up under his throat, folding herself in half to do so. He grabbed it but she shoved hard and he lost his balance. After that it was all on: he had hold of one ankle but she reversed her position so she could wrap her other knee around his neck. They rolled over and over, Kylo using his weight to capture her and Rey using her flexibility and the Force to wriggle out.

They ended up in a corner, Rey on top pinning Kylo’s arms to his sides. He flicked his hair out of his eyes and laughed up at her. He was a solid slab of muscle, his chest rising and falling easily under her weight with each breath, and there was no question she was only holding him down because he was enjoying where he was right now.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“You weren’t using the Force. You were letting me win!” Rey panted.

“Well, I would have if you’d worked harder. You should be able to throw me across the room with the Force.”

Again he gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. Then his eyes changed, pupils flaring wide. He looked away for a second, trying to hide some thought, then looked back with the strangest expression, half shy, half challenging. It was a gift of his slightly irregular features: he could look like two things at once. Rey bent closer to try and read him, then realised she could feel something pressing against her thighs. Kylo caught her expression and his grin widened. He shifted his hips so the mound in his pants molded into the gap between her thighs. It set off a ripple of pleasure and an answering pulse of Rey’s own.

Rey let go of him and jumped up with a snarl. He called her name, but she stormed out of the training room. There was wetness between her legs and it didn’t matter how hard she pounded her feet on the deck,  she couldn’t drive out that wickedly voluptuous  feeling. It was as though he’d planted some flower of pleasure that had no right to be there, determined to bloom no matter how much rage she poured on it. Worst of all, Kylo _had_ to know what she was feeling, thanks to that wretched Force bond. How he must be laughing at her!

She stomped along with no particular destination in mind, her guard swinging along smartly behind her. They were somewhere in the executive levels of the Finalizer, and she could see the officers she passed eyeing her. She must look a sight, with her clenched jaw and her hair a hot sweaty mess straggling halfway down her back. She gathered it up and tried to force it back into its buns as she went.

“Ah, the famous apprentice,” said a cold voice in front of her. Rey looked up. It was General Hux, strolling down the corridor with his hands behind his back, every inch of him combed and polished to perfection. “Such an ornament to our war effort.”

“I’m not his apprentice,” said Rey between gritted teeth.

“Well I’m sure I don’t know why we bother keeping you, then. I’ll bring it up with Ren next time I see him.”

“You do that,” said Rey.

“I have an even better idea. I was just on my way to talk to Snoke. You can come and explain yourself to him.” He reached forward, smiling, and hooked his finger under her kill collar to give it a little tug. “Come along.”

He let go of her and gestured for her guards to accompany them. She was forced to follow him to a pair of tall doors in one of the highest levels of the Finalizer, where all the architecture was designed to impress. The doors swung open to reveal a kind of dark amphitheatre with a throne in the centre. Hux touched a button and a blank holofield flickered to life, a virtual throne overlaying the real one in front of them. Hux stood to attention in front of it and indicated a spot where Rey should stand. She waited there, slouching mutinously and picking at her nails. The stormtrooper guard lined up behind them.

The hologram before them showed something moving. A very tall figure entered the field and sat on the throne. His limbs were skeletally thin, and his humanoid face was scarred by deep cuts. Something had once cleaved through to his very skull, leaving it misshapen. Rey shuddered in disgust, glad that he was only a hologram. 

“Supreme Leader.” Hux bowed.

“General,” said the creature on the throne, then jerked forward to get a better look at Rey. “What have we here?”

“Ren’s apprentice. I came across her running about my ship, as she has a habit of doing, and since I was on my way to see you I brought her along. I thought you might like to assess her progress.”

“Indeed,” said Snoke, sitting back. He studied Rey with his small, wide-set eyes. “How are you enjoying your stay on the Finalizer?”

Rey found Snoke’s lipless mouth and the scar deforming it too disturbing to watch when he spoke.

“I’m learning a lot,” she said vaguely.

“I should hope so. I haven’t seen so much potential in years. What a crime it would be, Rey, to let our little desert flower wither away unnoticed.”

“I was doing all right,” said Rey.

“On Jakku? You lived like a Loth-rat in a hole. Has Ren not told you what your future holds?”

“Not really.”

“Rey, you could be Queen of the Galaxy. The power I sense in you would bring systems to their knees. All would bow to you. Your word would be law.”

Rey tried to imagine it. Her mind was a blank. She couldn’t think what she would do with such power. Live in a castle? Fly around the Galaxy? Tell people to stop fighting? Who would she talk to?

Hux shifted slightly from his ramrod-straight pose next to her. Rey glanced at him. He didn’t seem too pleased with the conversation.

“Ah, Rey, I see you, crowned in light, adored,” said Snoke, his voice sinking to a silky croon.

“What would I have to give?” said Rey. “Nobody gives something for nothing”

“Only what you have naturally, and in abundance. Your power. And you don’t have to give it to anyone. Merely allow me to guide that power that is so manifest in you. Let me teach you how to wake it out of its wasteful slumber.”

“What would I have to do?”

“Give me your allegiance.”

“But I don’t know what sort of person you are.”

“Surely Ren should have told you? I am the wisest person you will ever meet. Few have lived as long as I, and fewer still have learned so much of the history and ways of the Force. I have so much to teach you, Rey.”

Rey hated the sound of her name in his deformed mouth. His voice covered her name in slime, her precious name that was the only gift her parents had left her.

“What exactly is Ren teaching you?” said Snoke, leaning forward again. “Let me see.”

Through her Force senses she felt a thread of something alien touch her. She could tell Snoke was far away, and it shook her to realise he could reach her at such a distance. He wanted to feel inside her head with those cold claws of his, to take out her thoughts one by one. To bend them and mould them to the shapes he desired. She wasn’t sure if she could block him out. His faint touch was so insidious, so subtle.

“What do you want?” Rey asked, and made herself stare into his eyes.

“Let me in,” he said. His attention sharpened to a blade of Force and Rey felt him trying to pry open her mind. She resisted, and his effort increased. She watched his mouth working like the mandibles of an insect, muttering half-voiced thoughts. How could Kylo serve this repulsive creature?

She grasped every scrap of Force she could find, wrapping it around her like a shield, and tried to pry apart the evil presence that was fingering the crevices of her mind, even though Snoke’s physical being was so far away. “You told Kylo if he killed his father the Dark Side would make him more powerful than any Force user before,” she spat. “And that he wouldn’t be safe any other way.”

“Yes,” said Snoke silkily. “And I should thank you for convincing Ren to kill Han. He resisted until some little scavenger girl outmatched him, and he realised he’d never have the power he needed unless he did as I asked.” He smiled, revealing mangled grey teeth.

“You’re blaming Han Solos’s death on me? You are repulsive,” Rey hissed.

For he was repulsive. Not just to look at — aliens came in many forms, many of them odd to human eyes, and nobody should be judged for the disfigurement of past injuries. Life and time left scars on everyone, if they lived long enough. But this!

Every hulk on Jakku had its secrets, and Rey had entered the dark caverns of their wreckage to find plenty of horrors. She could not have survived without having the courage to confront the ugly secrets of their black hearts. She used that courage now with Snoke, reaching out to him through the Force. Her will a tiny light in the obscure workings of his mind.

She reeled at what she found: A hunger so monstrous that it sickened her. No power could ever be enough for him. He craved an endless satisfaction of worship, of total control.

He’d tried to make Kylo in his image, she realised. Like Kylo, somewhere inside him there must be the fear that drove him. A terror that could only be assuaged if nothing in the galaxy moved without his command. It was an impossible dream, and one that had driven him mad in the execution. All free things might die so he could feel at rest, and still it would not be enough.

“You’re afraid!” she said.

“I have nothing to fear from YOU!” roared Snoke, drawing himself up to his full height. “You will learn that to your own detriment!” He jabbed a long finger at her. “It is YOU who will fear ME, if you don’t cooperate.”

“Five minutes of goodwill and promises and then I meet the real Snoke,” said Rey dryly, though it took an iron will to keep her voice from trembling. “Why would I give you my power? You can’t force me!"

“You will!” hissed Snoke, and suddenly her mind filled with a vision she’d had before. Herself, bound within a relentless machine. The endless scream. Pain, and millions of beings like herself fed into a maw of steel.

“You will NEVER!” said Rey. “I will NEVER be part of that.”

Snoke must have made some gesture to Hux, for the stormtroopers grabbed Rey and threw her roughly to the ground. She made to resist but Hux was standing above her holding the trigger to the kill collar. He kicked her onto her back and stood looking down at her as though she was something nasty that had stained his deck.

“You will show the Supreme Leader respect!” he spat at her. “Or there’s no place for you here.” He turned towards the throne. “Just say the word, Supreme Leader.”

“No,” said Snoke. “She will break. I sense the anger in her. That will be her undoing.”

“Get her out, then,” said Hux to the stormtroopers. They seized her roughly and started dragging her out of the room. 

As she left, Hux and Snoke continuted speaking together in low voices. They must have thought Rey was too far away to hear them, but some trick of the chamber's domed ceiling threw their voices.  She heard Hux say, “I’m uneasy having so many Force users on my ship. The remaining Knights of Ren can’t be trusted.”

“Haven’t they left the Finalizer?” asked Snoke. 

“They leave tomorrow,” said Hux.

“Fix their ship so it never arrives where it’s going,” answered Snoke. “It’ll be a nice mystery to keep Kylo on his toes.”

  



	15. No Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey begins to understand Kylo better. But understanding is not the same as mercy, as Kylo discovers.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

Kylo could feel Rey’s agitation along the Force bond and it was no surprise when she didn’t arrive for dinner at the usual time. Their sparring match had upset her. They’d both been enjoying it and then she’d felt the evidence of his desire. It made her so furious it was almost funny. She hated herself for wanting what he offered, and she’d need time to deal with that.

Kylo was no stranger to the feeling of a heart divided against itself. But he didn’t want to eat alone, and it was probably best to carry on as though nothing had happened. He called the command class mess and ordered two meals sent to her room.

When he arrived there her anger was clearly still raw. Her eyes looked red and puffy and she stood in the middle of her room, elbows cocked and fists clenched as though spoiling for fight.

“Does it make you that angry to realise that I find you attractive?” he asked.

She blinked as though she didn’t know what he was talking about. “What? No. I mean yes!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

“It’s not you, it’s Snoke!” she burst out furiously. She rounded on him, her eyes flashing, and the Force sparked and jumped between them. “How could you? How can you serve something like him? Can’t you _see_ what kind of a creature he is?”

“You _met_ Snoke?” said Kylo. “When? How?”

“I bumped into Hux and he was going to that…..throne-room thing you have. He had a meeting with Snoke’s hologram and he dragged me along.”

Kylo swallowed the cold lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat. All his reports to the Supreme Leader implied that Rey was coming around to their side. He was uncomfortably aware of how much he’d been shading the truth. There was no way Rey was ready to accept Snoke.

Rey was practically shouting. “He is a vile! And _you’re_ vile for following him. Doesn’t that kind of insane greed for power disgust you at all?”

“It’s not about power for its own sake. He wants control so we can have peace again,” said Kylo weakly.

“Really? _Really?”_ Rey was standing right in front of him, speaking through teeth that were clenched in a snarl. “Have you looked into him? How could you miss the….the _need_ in him? Power is an obsession with him, and I’d swear you could search a long time and never find a scrap of anything good in him.”

“I…” started Kylo, and then stopped. He’d never looked into Snoke’s mind. Snoke looked into his. That was the basis of their relationship: Master to apprentice. He could pick up Snoke’s surface feelings, but he’d never dared to probe his mind.

Rey must have sensed his uncertainty, for she put her hands beseechingly on his arms. “Kylo, that kind of hunger is never satisfied. He’s one of those people whose fear is so great that they will never rest until they have squeezed the life out of everything, and even then it’s not enough. Anything that moves or breathes without his will is a challenge to him. He’ll destroy everything.”

“Snoke’s not afraid,” said Kylo. It’d been Snoke after all who showed him how to be brave, when he was a child terrified of his own powers.

“Then why is he in hiding? Why isn’t he here? Search your feelings, Kylo.”

Instead of searching his feelings, he searched hers, gripping her shoulders and dropping his head so they were almost nose to nose. To his surprise, she opened her connection to the Force bond and let him in. She wanted him to see her memories of the day. It was like standing in clear light. Her warmth enveloped him and he was standing with her in the throne room with Snoke towering above them. He relived the contest of wills between them. Stars, she was strong! And unafraid.

“Oh, I’m afraid,” she said softly. “But I can’t look away.”

And so he looked with her, and saw a Snoke he’d never seen before.

Of course, he was familiar with Snoke’s cruelty and his absolute solutions. His tactics worked faster than the endless wafty talking that was the New Republic’s idea of rule. It was cleaner in the end, Snoke always said, to rip a problem out by the roots. He taught Kylo to confront pain head-on and even to welcome it . Pain was a sure sign that he was moving in the right direction.

“Oh, Kylo,” she breathed. “He made you do all those things.” Her eyes searched his, filled with understanding.

If only it were forgiveness. “You _chose,_ Kylo. You chose to do them! I see the fear. That you wouldn’t measure up to Snoke. You told yourself your life was a service to Darth Vader, but Vader wasn’t the one setting the rules you lived by.”

“Snoke was my guide. My family didn’t want anything to do with the Force I have. It was destroying me.

“Do you even know what Vader stood for? Luke forgave him in the end, you know. They reconciled. Vader regretted his life, but he died at peace.”

Her words were a slap in the face. “What a pack of lies. And how would you know? I thought Luke didn’t talk to you!” Kylo said desperately.

“Leia told me.” Rey stopped abruptly. “She should have told you. Obviously.” She dropped her eyes, thinking. “I guess families can get it wrong. She tried to cover up everything.”

“Yes she did!” shouted Kylo. “And look where it got her.” His grip on her shoulders tightened. He wanted to shake the truth into her but he could feel the the resistance coiled in her muscles.

“Blame everyone else, why don’t you?” said Rey, shoving him away. “And what about Tuanul Village? Finn told me about that. It was a massacre. Nothing to do with your family either. It was _your_ choice to kill them all.”

Beside himself, Kylo kicked over a chair.  “With Phasma breathing down my neck, sure. Every report to Hux, to the Supreme Leader, all pointing out how I held back. How I didn’t seem very willing to enforce First Order control.”

She picked up the fallen chair with exaggerated care. “Control yourself. You’ve got your own room to wreck, if you’ve run out of good arguments.”

“What we did was standard First Order practice, Rey. It’s war.”

“War you started,” snarled Rey, striding over to him.

“A war we could end by winning it,” said Kylo beseechingly. “Come on, we could do this together!” He took her by the shoulders again. He was holding a living flame, something so extraordinary he couldn’t believe he’d been allowed to have this precious thing in his life. He had to convince her, or she’d walk away and leave him in the dark.

“I’m not doing anything with Snoke,” said Rey, eyes blazing. She looked so beautiful, with the pride and determination burning in her. So much Light in her.

Kylo groaned. “Forget Snoke. Forget all this. Rey, you and me, we were never meant to…" Her face was so close to his. Was that only anger, making her eyes so bright? The Force bond told him she wanted to convince him as much as he wanted to convince her. Did she care what he thought that much?

This was no argument he could win with words. On impulse, he bent down and kissed her open mouth.

For one second she didn’t react, and it was as though he was drinking pure Force from her lips. He pulled her into his arms, her slight body trembling against him for a moment while he caressed her lips with his tongue.

She shut her teeth with a snap and found the Force energy she’d been lacking that morning to hurl him against the ceiling. He hit the floor, rolled to his feet and backed away to the door. He raised his hand to her and she tensed.

“You!” he began, when his voice would work again. “The one beautiful thing in my life…”

“That’s not my fault,” she said. “You could have lived another life.”

Kylo slammed his fist on the door, shoved his helmet on, and left.

  



	16. I, The Unmaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has to find her own ways to make the Force work for her, or she'll never be free of the restraints Hux has put on her.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

When Kylo left, Rey crumpled onto the floor. How did he do this to her? Snoke’s threats turned her will to steel, but Kylo had the opposite effect. Everything she did to hurt him ended up hurting her too. Rey cursed the Force bond. And when he kissed her, she could feel his longing so clearly. He wanted something to love, and Rey was only one in the galaxy that could possibly understand the weird, castaway existence the Force had given him. She was his equal.

Not just an equal. A mirror. She covered her eyes, but she couldn’t stop seeing it, no matter how much she wanted to deny it. She understood his longing, because it was hers as well. What he wanted, she wanted too, so badly. Her body wanted to melt into his, to feel his strength envelop her. It wanted to strain up to meet his kiss with a hungry mouth. To press herself onto those full lips, so much softer than she had imagined. Even thinking of it, her heart jumped. She could have done it, teased his lips apart with hers and seen those dark, haunted eyes widen with surprise at her passion. She could have driven his pain out with her heat.

Rey drove her knuckles into her eyes, trying to rub out the tears. “Stars, give me strength! Oh, if only the Force could guide me!” she whispered miserably.

There was a soft knock on the door and Rey’s moment of weakness vanished. If Kylo was back to dump his self-pity on her she was going to punch him in the face. She scrambled over to the door and yanked it open.

But instead of Kylo it was Kezia, followed by Barra and Sim. They rushed past Rey and shut the door quickly behind them.

“Rey! We’ve done it!” said Sim, too excited to notice Rey’s mood. “Barra broke the simulator consoles at the school so they had to have the comms class on a live system!” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And he sent a message!” He reached out and touched Kezia’s hair with its coded beads.

His grin faltered when he saw Kezia’s expression. Kezia and Barra were staring at Rey’s tear-streaked face.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sim, turning to Rey.

“It’s that man, isn’t it?” said Barra. “We saw him leaving your room!” Kezia tried to shush him, but he ploughed on angrily. “No Kezia! He only healed you because Rey made him do it. You should hear what the stormtroopers say about him. He’s much worse than you think!”

“Did _Lord Ren_ make you cry?” asked Sim. He might be little, but he had a mighty frown. “He was stomping mad when he came out of here!”

“No, it’s nothing. There's nothing you can do about it. Forget you saw me like this. I’ll be fine,” Rey gabbled. Sim, always the hot-tempered one, looked ready to punch Kylo himself.

“She wants to be left alone,” said Kezia. Rey nodded. Bad luck was following her everywhere today, and if anything happened to make her day any worse, she wanted the Kezedar kids well away from it. Kezia grabbed her brothers’ hands and they exited as hastily as they’d come in.

As soon as they’d gone, Rey wanted to call them back. Had they really called the Resistance? What exactly had they said? Did they get a reply?

Suddenly it seemed more urgent than ever to deactivate her kill collar. It would be grim comedy to be rescued only to have her head sliced off because of the location limiter on the collar. And after today, Hux would be looking for any reason to do away with her. If the children’s message to the Resistance was detected then he wouldn’t hesitate.

She sat down to work on the collar again as she’d been practicing. It had to be possible, even if her only tool was her mind. But it was so hard, with the new sense of urgency eating away at her. After only a few minutes she pulled out of her intense meditation —clearly it wasn’t going to work, pushing at it like that — and let her mind drift. Words started to come to her, as they often did when she was mentally just fiddling around. Meaningless at first, they started to turn and gather significance as she went on.

_Winding, unwinding, I am the word of skill_

_Turning, unturning, I am the blade of thought_

_What holds up the arch, but air?_

_Air, and its own weight_

_And the maker’s knowledge._

_Cunning the maker, and more cunning still,_

_I, the unmaker._

_What holds the current coiled in its spiral dance?_

_Circuits, and power,_

_And the maker’s knowledge._

_Cunning the maker, and more cunning still,_

_I, the unmaker._

A little curl of Force joined itself to her words. The words made a focus, a lens to gather and direct it. There was a tiny click and a slight frizzling sensation around her neck, and she knew the collar was dead. She’d seen all its inner workings clearly with her mind’s eye, reached in with the Force and gently stirred everything apart. It was no longer a machine, but a meaningless jumble of elements.

She drew a long, shuddering breath, jumped to her feet and walked around the room swinging her arms, suddenly feeling loose and light in every limb. Hux still had his other hold on her, but his threat of instant death was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed ideas from Robert Graves' translation of the Song of Amhergin. It's not the meaning of the poem, whatever it is, that drew me to it, but the repetition of the word "I". I imagined it as something a person might use to hold on to their sense of who they were and to their powers and potential. Like a mantra.
> 
>  
> 
> I am a stag of seven tines,  
> I am a wide flood on a plain,  
> I am a wind on the deep waters,  
> I am a shining tear of the sun,  
> I am a hawk on a cliff,  
> I am fair among the flowers,  
> I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke,
> 
> I am a battle-waging spear,  
> I am a salmon in the pool,  
> I am a hill of poetry,  
> I am a ruthless boar,  
> I am a threatening noise of the sea,  
> I am a wave of the sea,  
> Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen?


	17. Hux Makes his Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux has been totally opposed to Kylo and Snoke's "pet project" from the very beginning. He sees an opportunity to get back at Kylo.
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How he hated the Finalizer sometimes! As he left Rey's rooms there seemed to be people everywhere, rushing about more than usual for this late hour. His helmet felt so suffocating he was liable to boil his own head in it. He wanted to punch random stormtroopers for getting in his way. He passed the Kezedar kids coming the other way, slinking towards Rey’s room. Lucky them. Rey was soft-hearted for the little loth-rats.

As he left Rey's room, he  She had nothing but scorn for him. Kylo went to the training facility and spent half an hour smashing his way through the toughest hologram opponents he could dial up. Maybe if he attacked Rey like this, if he gave her no quarter, she wouldn’t be so —

Be so what? So amazing? So brave?

When he could finally bear to return to his room he found a message from Hux on his comms console. Hux’s image had those all-too-familiar spots of high colour on his cheeks and he was just about spitting through his teeth.

“If you are not going to attend meetings, I’m supposed to come to your room and wait upon your leisure, am I? Are you not aware there’s a suspected security breach?” He moved to key off the recording but stopped. “The Supreme Leader is furious with you too,” he added. The message blinked off.

Kriff it, meetings! Just what he needed.

Kylo flung himself down onto the chair in front of his grandfather’s helmet. “Speak to me!” he hissed through clenched teeth. He used to dream such dreams of the spirit that spoke from it. The talisman that held him steady through all his storms. But there was nothing now. He picked it up and looked at it closely. Some insect had started a web in one of the grilles. His arm seemed to act by itself and made to hurl the helmet away in revulsion. He stopped himself in time,put the helmet back carefully and buried his face in his hands. The Force jangled around him. He could sense that Rey was meditating nearby in some unfamiliar way. He drew back from her as though burned.

Somebody — some people — were hanging around outside his door, agitated about something, deciding whether to talk to him or not. He leapt up furiously and jerked open the door. Three of the Kezedar children stepped back in alarm, staring at him in terror.

“What?” he snapped.

“We were just passing by…” began the girl. Kezia. She was linking arms with her brothers and trying to pull them away. The younger boy was absolutely seething.

“You were discussing whether to come in and bother me. I felt it,” said Kylo. She gulped and nodded.

“You need to…” started the younger boy. Kezia clapped a hand over his mouth. He must have bitten her, because she dropped it in a hurry.

The sound of approaching stormtroopers clattered up the hallway. They sounded as though they were going at the double. Abruptly Barra pushed the other two into Kylo’s room, saying “Can we…”

“Can we make a scene in my room? Fine!” snarled Kylo. “What is this all about?”

“It’s about Rey. You shouldn’t make her cry,” announced the younger boy. “She’s nice to everybody, and you—”

“She’s not nice to me!” spat Kylo, incensed. “And I’m not nice to anyone, so get out of here before I choke you!” He went to grab the boy. Kezia flung herself onto him and he grabbed her by her beaded braids.

There was a knock on the door. Kylo made a slashing motion with one hand and it ripped itself off its hinges. The two boys dived into the kitchen and out of sight.

Hux stood in the doorway looking unimpressed. ‘I thought you were growing out of these displays. Sadly, it seems I was….what’s this?” His eyes travelled over the girl still in Kylo’s grip. “Got yourself a little harem going here now? Not having much luck with Rey then?”

Kylo dropped Kezia and she backed away from them both. “It’s nothing to do with you, Hux.”

“It is when you start slacking on your duties. There’s been a….” Hux’s eyes flicked down to the girl and he evidently thought better of discussing the security breach in front of her. “Anyway I can see what’s been detaining you. The Supreme Leader will be interested to know how you’re spending your time instead of getting Rey under control.”

Kylo couldn’t even dignify that with an answer. Every variation of “This isn’t what it looks like,” would only make things worse.

“I’m going to take Rey and bring her to heel, Ren. After what I saw today, I have no doubt the Supreme Leader will agree. You’ve somehow given her the impression that she can disrespect him. He is furious.”

“She’s mine, Hux!”

“You’re not in charge here, Ren. Or haven’t you noticed?” Hux looked past him at Kezia, who was flattened against the wall behind Kylo’s kitchen counter. Something pricked Kylo’s Force senses, but he couldn’t pay attention with Hux getting in his face like this. “These kids run around like the ship belongs to them. I’ve had enough of it. Come here,” said Hux, then did a double-take. “Wait a minute. Don’t I know you?”Kezia shook her head. Hux leaned over her sharply. “What happened to your scar?”

“That was my sister,” said Kezia.

“You don’t have a sister,” said Hux. “Don’t lie to me. I have a photographic memory for things like that, and there aren’t that many of you hold-rats.”

“I healed her with the Force,” said Kylo.

“Why would you do that?” asked Hux.

“I needed somebody to practice on. Now piss off, the lot of you,” said Kylo.

Hux looked at Kezia with an ugly gleam in his eyes and took her by the elbow. “I’ll talk to you later, and you’d better have a good explanation,” he told Kylo, and hustled Kezia out over the remains of the door. She cast a despairing look back over her shoulder as they left.

Kylo stood with his hands on his hips for a moment wondering what he was going to do without a door. He heard the boys stand up and creep towards him. “Get out,” he said. They fled.

The door was the least of his problems. Maybe he could go sleep in his shuttle while he thought about the other ones. Including the fact that there was knife missing from his kitchen.


	18. Hux's Hostage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is forced to act.
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Rey’s bad dreams had returned worse than before. She was actually relieved to be woken by a timid knock on her door. She shook off the phantoms of the bloody temple and went to open it. Sim and Barra were there, looking absolutely terrified.

“It’s Kezia!” they both said at once. “Hux has taken her!” added Barra.

“To his rooms, we think it was!” said Barra. “Up on the top officer deck. We followed him. He didn’t even care we were there.”

“He wanted to know why she didn’t still have a scar.”

“He _wanted_ us to see him beat her up.”

“Kylo told Hux he healed Kezia, but Hux didn’t believe him because as soon as they left his room Hux started questioning her,” said Barra. “He was twisting her arm and asking her who did it.”

“Who was in Kylo’s room?” asked Rey. “Hux? Kezia? Why?”

They gave her a garbled story that didn’t explain why they’d gone to Kylo’s room at all. The only thing that was clear was that Kezia was in danger.

“Kezia finally told him you healed her. I don’t know why!” said Sim.

“She panicked. He was holding his blaster against her head,” said Barra.

“But he only got madder,” said Sim.

“Yeah, he realised Kezia’s your friend, and it made him worse,” said Barra. “He held up this little metal thing and said if Kezia didn’t do exactly what he said, he’d press a button and your head would be cut off.”

“He got a really mean smile on his face,” said Sim.

“He’s going to…”

“I know what he’s going to do!” said Rey. “But listen, I broke the collar. It can’t kill me.”

“Kezia doesn’t know that! She’d never risk your life, and she’ll think she has to do whatever Hux wants or you’ll die,” said Barra miserably.

“I know, I know!” said Rey. She was throwing on her clothes. “I’m going to pay Hux a visit. You wait here.”

Rey had no plan in mind at all as she rushed out of her room. “May the Force be with me,” she said to herself. It must have been, because the stormtroopers assigned to her guard were led by FN-4942. “General Hux has requested my company in his room,” she told him blandly, while leaning her Force up against him. It’s important! she signalled.

“That seems like a rather unusual request, sir!” said one of the guards. Rey turned her attention to him and suggested silently that her affair with Hux was something widely-known but never to be mentioned. The guard fell silent.

“This way,” said FN-4942, and led them up to the top level of officer’s suites. Hux’s door had a plain geometric design in red to mark it out from the others. Positively extravagant by First Order standards.

She considered her options. Six guards including one possible ally. Unlikely that she could use her powers to convince them all to march off and leave her to blast down Hux’s door with the Force. It would only take one suspicious and resistant guard to dispel whatever beliefs she tried to put into them.

She’d have to persuade Hux to let her into his room. He probably would, while he believed the kill collar put her at his mercy. He’d see it as a chance to torture her by making her watch Kezia be hurt, and vice versa.

Seething internally, Rey put on the most desperate expression she could manage, and knocked on the door. She had to knock several times, and loudly, before it opened. A furious and dishevelled Hux glared down at her for a second before his expression changed.

“Oh. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he said. “Come to join my little party?”

“I’ve come to ask that you leave Kezia alone,” said Rey. Hux’s cold eyes flicked over her, up and down. She’d have to beg harder, something she’d never done in her life. She tried to call up tears. “Please. Don’t hurt her. She’s just a child.”

“I’m sure you can heal her up again as good as new,” said Hux.

“Please no,” said Rey, hoping the tremble in her voice sounded pitiful. She was shaking with anger.

She had to give Hux credit for being extremely cautious. Whatever he’d been doing to Kezia, he’d kept the kill collar’s trigger on him. He pulled it out of his shirt pocket. “She’s being difficult. Perhaps you can make her be more obliging. Come in.” He held the door so she could enter.

Rey walked in only until she heard Hux shut the door behind them. Then she whirled around.

“You’re dead!” she said. The Force came to her in a wave that bore her up as though she would fly, and she did, her heels slamming towards his sneering face. Utterly unsurprised by her attack, he held up the little metal cylinder. Its lid was open and his thumb was on the trigger.

She heard a gasp from behind her. “Rey no, he’ll kill you! He’s got —”

Time slowed as Rey and Kezia watched Hux’s thumb depress the trigger. Perhaps time slowed for him too, for he had time to realise when the kill collar failed. His face changed to horror for an instant before Rey’s feet made contact, and then his head snapped back with the impact.

He was nowhere near recovering his balance when Rey landed, turned and kicked one knee out from under him. He dropped to a kneel in front of her, goggling up at her in disbelief. The Force made black jagged lightning in Rey’s hands. She could end it now, discharging the violence in her with one blow of her power. She could make it as painful as he deserved, roared the blackness inside her.

The Force seemed alive with voices. _Ah, now!_ said one voice, cold and richly satisfied.

 _Ah, no!_ said another, hot and agonised.

 _You’re completing your Awakening! Show us what you can do!_ said the first voice.

Even Luke seemed to be in there somewhere, and the dream people from the vanished Jedi Temple. Some baying for blood, some singing their long-lost prayers.

 _Not like this!_ said the nearer voice passionately.

All in a split second. Hux was gathering himself for a counterattack and Rey was unarmed but for the Force. Rey closed her eyes. Was Luke really out there somewhere? She remembered him on the island, standing before the sun as it rose between the pillars of the Daylight Gate. Remembered the few times he fought her with that stupid stick of his, no movement wasted, calm and unafraid.

 _Do you want to hate yourself the way you hate me?_ said the nearer voice.

“I will _never_ give in to the dark,” whispered Rey. She opened her eyes. Hux was lurching to his feet, driving a fist towards her face. Rey caught it easily and flung him past her with his own momentum. His head hit the wall and he slumped down.

Kezia stepped past Rey holding a wicked-looking paring knife. She plunged it without hesitation into Hux’s back.

“Oh!” said Rey. There was a lot of blood. She looked at the knife in Kezia’s hand.

“It’s Kylo’s,” said Kezia. “I was afraid to use it while Hux had the trigger. Why didn’t it work?”

“I broke the collar,” said Rey.

Kezia blew out a long breath of relief. “Good thing you came when you did. I was running out of places to hide the knife.”

“Are you all right?” asked Rey. Kezia didn’t look all right. She was half naked and her skin showed the marks of violence.

“I am now,” said Kezia, looking down at Hux. 

“We need to get out of here,” said Rey. Kezia nodded and started pulling her clothes back on. Rey ran around Hux’s rooms opening doors, looking for anything that might help. Weapons. Clothes to wear as a disguise. Anything. The guard waiting outside would be suspicious if Hux didn’t appear in the doorway to hand his prisoners over. Plus there was the matter of his dead body lying across the entrance hall and the still-spreading puddle of blood.

What Rey found was a back door, and it was unguarded. Hux’s apartments were so large that they filled the space between two of the Finalizer’s corridors, and the designers had seen the convenience of putting in two doors.

Kezia came to join Rey a moment later. She'd been searching Hux's bedroom and found a small blaster, which she showed to Rey before stowing it in her waistband. “Where are my brothers?”

“My room. Don’t run. Act as though we’re meant to be here,” said Rey, and led the way out the back door. She was using the Force to persuade anyone they met that there was nothing unusual about them being there. The Finalizer was huge and up on these top levels Rey in her black tunic could be mistaken for an off-duty officer. She tried to imitate the stiff way she’d seen them walk and the nagging tone she’d heard them use on their children. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it. You start these fights with the children of superior offices, you get what you deserve. Learn to behave. You’re an embarrassment to your family… wait 'til your mother sees you…”

The only people they encountered gave Rey approving looks.

  


	19. Fly!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey must escape the Finalizer
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The wings nearly fell off their escape several times. There was no way the children were leaving without the rest of their family and they had to go to the hold deck to collect them.  Luckily the Kezedars were used to danger. They gathered their belongings, their mother hoisted the baby onto one hip, and they herded the toddler out the door. The one guard outside their room who tried to stop them proved to be a blessing in disguise: when he started to raise the alarm Kezia  knocked him out with her blaster set to ‘stun’. The children swarmed him and dragged him into the filthy hold where they'd been living, and stripped him of his uniform so their father Chaer could put it on. A time-honoured ruse, but still worth trying. They locked the real guard in their room.

It was the middle of the night shift and there were few people about. The earlier uproar seemed to have died down: either the Finalizer crew had given up solving the security breach, or they were looking elsewhere. Rey could hear Sim whispering to his mother, “...and it was us! Barra found a live channel and sent it to the Resistance!”

“Where are we going?” Kezia’s mother asked once the coast was clear. She was doing a heroic job of keeping the baby quiet.

“One of the shuttle bays,” said Rey. She knew the general layout of Star Destroyers from her years of salvaging on Jakku, and she’d also taken note of the areas her guards avoided showing her during her walks around this ship. That would be where the landing bays were.

“Shuttle Bay Six is our best bet,” said Barra. “It’s mostly officer class travel and the Knights that use that one. It’s usually not busy.”

A squad of troopers approached from a side corridor.

“Medical emergency! Stand clear!” called Rey, improvising desperately. In her black tunic and pants, she could be mistaken for a medical orderly of some kind. She certainly suggested it, with every ounce of Force she had.

“What, all of them?” asked the squad leader.

“Best we quarantine them all,” said Chaer, waving the blaster he’d taken. They were allowed to pass, the troopers giving them a wide berth as Rey pushed the most disgusting plague images she could think of at them. The landing bay was close now. The squad marched around a corner, and Rey led the Kezedars in a tip-toe run to the hangar bay. As the doors slid open, an alarm sounded, a crazed whooping that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

But it didn’t matter, because a sleek black shuttle was waiting right in front of them, its engine warming up. They scooped up the smaller children and sprinted for the welcoming square of its open door.

Two solid black figures detached themselves from a landing strut where they’d been sitting.

“Well look who’s here. You got your times right for once, Talksy.” It was Slasheye.

Rey and the Kezedars stopped, pushing the children behind them.

Talks-to-Ghosts stepped forward and bowed to Rey. “I knew you’d come. The Queen,” he said. “Or nearly. I felt the dark coming for you.”

“But she said no to it, Talksy. She’s not on our side,” said Slasheye. He unhooked his lightsaber and ignited it. “But we didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

“You know who else isn’t on your side? Snoke,” said Rey, raising her voice to be heard over the alarm.

“Yeah we know. He can’t wait to get rid of us now he’s got you to play with,” said Slasheye. “You’ll be his star apprentice.”

“I will not!” said Rey.

“A lot of people say that, and they turn out to be wrong. But us, we’re going to save you from that fate. You can thank us in the Force,” said Slasheye. “After you’re dead.” He advanced with his lightsaber at the ready.

“Wait!” said Rey. “Snoke doesn’t just want you gone, he wants you dead. He’s ordered Hux to sabotage your ship. We have the same enemy.”

“Prove it!” said Slasheye.

Talks-to-Ghosts had been staring around the landing bay as though there was something interesting about the ceiling. He made a sudden wringing gesture with his hands, and Rey felt the Force twist past her. The alarm klaxon stopped. “I can’t think with that kriffing thing,” he said, then gave Rey a sharp, sane look. “She’s not lying, I think.”

“You’ve been wrong before,” said Slasheye, circling Rey at a crouch. “And I’ve been looking forward to this for too long to give it up now.”

“Stop!” said Rey. “I’m a mechanic. I bet I can find whatever Hux has put on the ship to kill you. And if I do, you’ll take us out of here.”

Slasheye stopped circling and considered the idea. Talks-to-Ghosts seemed to notice the Kezedars for the first time.

“Whoah! Who are they?” He jumped back and ignited his lightsaber.

“They’re just people, Talksy. Leave them alone,” said Slasheye irritably. He seemed to come to some decision, and waved them up the ramp to the ship. Rey rushed over to the hyperdrive diagnostics panel.

“I bet it’ll be tied to the hyperdrive so it’ll blow when you’re away from the Finalizer and off all the scopes,” she said. She stood over the repair access hatch and pointed. “See those little scratches? Somebody’s opened this recently. Barra, there should be a set of magnawrenches in that box on the wall.”

Once she got into the drive feed access, the sabotage was obvious. A little circular box with a blinking light, wired into the plasma feed cables. _“You_ don’t belong here,” Rey told it, and yanked it off. She held it up for Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts to see. Slasheye took it from Rey’s hands and inspected it, his jaw working. He seemed to be biting back a lot of angry words.

“Death,” breathed Talks-to-Ghosts, staring at it.

“Not today, and not us,” said Rey firmly.

“Stormtroopers!” yelled Sim from the door. His father hit the switch to close it. Slasheye jumped out of his reverie and ran up to the cockpit.

“I’ll be your pilot for today,” he said savagely. The ship launched with a kick that threw them all onto the floor. The baby howled and the toddler screamed. Talks-to-Ghosts laughed like maniac. Rey followed him into the cockpit just in time to see the Finalizer spread out below them like a city of lights.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to…” began Slasheye.

“Yes, let’s!” answered Talks-to-Ghosts, dropping into the weapons seat. Moments later a brace of torpedoes shot towards the Finalizer’s bridge.

Slasheye whooped and pounded his fist on the console. “Nobody expected that! How do you like that, Hux?”

“We are the Knights of Ren,” said Talks-to-Ghosts happily, the flares of destruction reflecting in his eyes.

“The _new_ Knights of Ren,” said Slasheye. He jinked the ship left and right. It was powerful but steered like a sarlacc on skates. Yells of protest and the sound of somebody trying not to vomit came up from the deck below.

“I’ll just co-pilot, shall I?” said Rey. “We won’t dodge the TIE-fighters in this, so we’d better get to hyperspace.” She punched in the coordinates she knew best and started running the calculations for the jump.

“Where are we going?” asked Slasheye.

Talks-to-Ghosts drew a bead on the swarm of TIE-fighters pouring out of the Finalizer and fired.

“Ahch-To,” he said dreamily, and gave Rey a cracked grin. “You have unfinished business. Am I right?”

Rey nodded. She was crouched over the the navcomp, restraining her urge to thump it. They needed to jump _now._

Talks-to-Ghosts hummed serenely as he targeted their pursuers. “Ren will be pissed,” he said.

Rey glanced up at the rearview imager, which showed the Finalizer as a constellation of lights dropping rapidly astern. Impulsively she dropped the barrier she’d built to block out the Force bond. Instantly it was as though she could see Kylo up close through one of the transparisteel ports far behind her.  His hands were spread wide, pressed against the frame, and he watched her leave with burning eyes. As he felt her link to him, he thumped his fists on the port with an impact Rey caught along the Force bond.  

_Don’t go!_

_They’re shooting at me,_ she said. _I can’t come back._

_You should have come to me. I could have protected you from Hux._

_Stars, Kylo, do you think I could live in that metal box for the rest of my life?_ The thought of Kylo protecting her was so unexpected that it made her smile.

The ship’s engines vibrated around her, accelerating. The space in front of them was alive with promise, and Rey’s heart rose at the nearness of freedom.

Kylo caught her joy along the Force bond.

 _Must you always have what I want?_ But his thoughts now had a bittersweet tang. He was so used to losing anything he cared about. The bond was so strong between them that even now Rey seemed to see his face. She wished she could touch him, to smooth away the expression of unbearable longing there.

 _So. You’re going._ He didn’t seem as angry, and his next words surprised her. _Speed you well, then. I’ll find you, just the same._

Rey’s heart did a little jump. She’d thought Kylo’s desire for her — what he thought of as love — was entirely selfish. But he wished her well, and she was moved by it. She could feel him cheering her on to freedom even as his own heart was wrung by loss.

And there it was, right where his heart was breaking, the light.

 _Get out of there! They’ll come for you next!_ she said, for she wished him well too.

The navcomp chimed. Calculations complete. Slasheye reached up to pull the toggle switch and the space around them smeared and turned blue. The Finalizer vanished. Rey felt a wrench that was more than the effect hyperspace.

  



	20. Run, Kylo!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no place for Kylo on the Finalizer now, even if Hux's body hasn't been discovered yet.
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In Kylo’s nightmare, Rey leaned over him where he was bound on the altar. Her eyes were entirely black apart from a yellow disc where the iris should be. It was like staring into a furnace. A glimpse of the flames that would consume everything. She smiled as she took up the knife. The crowd at her back screamed with excitement.

With a cry of horror, Kylo sat up. He was in his room, which was dark and dull as always. Alone. But something had woken him.

He reached out with his Force senses and felt it at once. Turmoil in the Force. It was the dark side, and it had Rey caught in its jaws, shaking her like a loth-hound shakes its prey. Rey was riding a wave of anger. She was going to kill someone.

She was turning to the dark side, just as Snoke had intended. If she did, he wouldn’t know her any more. She’d be a cog in Snoke’s machine.

 _Not like this!_ he begged silently along the Force bond. She’d built such a barrier against him, it was hard to be sure she heard him. He battered against it. _Do you want to hate yourself the way you hate me?_

Then suddenly the pressure on his temples relented. Rey had made a decision. The Dark side ebbed away. But he could still feel the oppressive sense of some threat. Snoke’s attention was on him, he knew.

And where was Rey? What had happened since he’d stormed out of her room earlier that evening? He held the palm of his hand against his lips for a moment. She’d nearly accepted his kiss. Incredible. But there was no time to dwell on that. He sensed danger was close behind her.

He threw on his clothes and burst out of his quarters. A moment later he was outside Rey's room, but even as he pounded on her door his Force senses told him she wasn't there.  He ran up and down the halls of the Finalizer, barely aware of the figures turning to stare after him. Somebody reached out and caught him by the elbow — one of the officers. Kylo flung him to the ground.

“You’re wanted in the holo chamber!” said the officer, scrambling away from Kylo and shielding his head. “The Supreme Leader—”

For the first time in his life, Kylo considered disobeying a direct order. But his feet seemed to take him to the holo chamber of their own volition. Snoke appeared immediately, his features rigid with anger. He leaned forward as if he wished he could jump out of the holopad.

“You lied to me. You said the girl was coming round to our side. And what do I find? She’s learned how to defend herself better than ever, and she opposes us. You were supposed to win her over to the First Order, yet she hates everything we stand for!”

Snoke reached out to hurt Kylo with the Force. Kylo flinched, expecting pain. Every nerve in his body lit up, hot and cold at the same time. It didn’t hurt as much as he remembered. Rey used some form of defence to block the Force bond, and in their contest of wills, it seemed Kylo had learned how to do it too. Still, Snoke wouldn’t stop torturing Kylo unless he was utterly beaten. Kylo doubled over and screamed, just he’d always done before. Just as Snoke wanted.

It was disgusting being forced to feed Snoke’s appetites like this. Incredible how he’d denied it until now.

The pain stopped. Snoke leaned back, satisfied. His hands still twitched dangerously. “So, let us talk. The girl is on the loose. She had the opportunity to kill Hux, but she didn’t take it. Despite having an abundance of hatred and fear, she resisted the pull of the Dark. I can’t imagine a more spectacular proof of your failure to turn her,” said Snoke.

“Hux will kill her…” said Kylo.

“He’d better. She’s no use to us, Ren. Accept it.” Snoke leaned forward again, his mouth twisted in contempt. “The worst of it is, Ren, that I don’t think I can trust you to kill her. It seems I’ve chosen a weak tool for my purposes.”

What was he meant to feel? Shame? Contrition? Kylo dropped his gaze, hiding the lack of either feeling.

“I’m giving you one more chance to prove yourself, Ren. Forget the girl. She’s a disaster for you. I’m sending you to Ahch-to. What I want is there. My goals haven’t changed: to finish Luke and to enter the First Jedi Temple.  We know the way into it is on Ahch-to. Find it! I’ll meet you there!”

Kylo bowed deeply and left. He wanted nothing more than to leave the Finalizer far behind him. But he couldn’t leave Rey here, at Hux’s mercy. He had to find her.

As he left the holo chamber, a klaxon sounded. The ship was waking up like a hive of insects that had been kicked open. Stormtroopers appeared everywhere, running, weapons held at the ready.

“What’s going on?” asked Kylo, grabbing the nearest trooper.

“Prisoners are escaping,” he said. Just then Phasma arrived, out of uniform and leading a group of the Finalizer’s command staff. They all looked like they’d just got out of bed.

“Lord Ren!” she snapped, and saluted. “We need to talk to the Supreme Leader. Do you know if he’s contactable?”

“I spoke to him just now,” said Kylo, nodding back towards the holo chamber behind him. “What’s happening?”

“Hux is dead. Somebody stabbed him.”

An officer by her side looked up from her wristcomm. “A shuttle is launching. Shuttle bay six.”

“That’ll be one of yours!” said Phasma.

“The Knights of Ren were scheduled to leave earlier this evening,” said Kylo. “Is it them?” He pushed past Phasma and ran out to the nearest viewport, an absurd feeling of hope bursting in his chest. There was the shuttle turning to fire on the Finalizer. He reached out with the Force and almost laughed aloud with surprise. Slasheye, Talks-to-Ghosts and Rey were all there, and they were working together to escape.

He was so used to Rey blocking their Force bond that he nearly jumped when the barrier between them dropped. She was suddenly present, warm and alive and full of joy. How he longed for that in his life! But not here, in this durasteel cage of a ship.

There she went, taking her freedom with her.

Freedom, he thought. _Must you always have what I want?_

She wanted it so much. He felt it through their bond.

Stars, how it hurt to let her go! Her thoughts reached out to him in an invisible caress, brushing across his heart. _There, the light!_ Her smile blazed across the space between them.

 _Speed you well_ he said, and despite his pain, he meant it.

 _Get out, they’re coming for you,_ she replied. Her ship flashed into hyperspace. Kylo smiled, and went to prepare for his own journey. The bond between them was stronger than either of them had realised. He’d find her again, wherever she went.

  



	21. Back to Ahch-to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey believes she has unfinished business on Ahch-to, and Kylo has his orders to go there too.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

Two days into their journey it was clear they were never all going to make it alive. It was one thing to have children toddling around a big empty place like Niima Outpost. A family of seven and two half-crazy Knights of Ren packed into a medium-sized First Order shuttle was something else.

“If that baby wakes me one more time, I’m going to kill it,” snarled Slasheye. “Before it robs me of the will to live.”

“When I was on Moraband I went ten days without sleeping,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. “Those Force-ghosts talk, talk, talk….” He was lying across the control panel staring up at the endless glow of hyperspace above them. Rey worried that he was going to roll onto something vital, but nobody could persuade him to move.

“Yeah, and afterwards you tried to fly us into a supernova.”

“It would have been incredible.”

“And you kept trying to eat the dejarik pieces all the way home. What was that about?”

“I don’t remember,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. Rey laughed. She was getting crazy from lack of sleep, too. Thoughts of Kylo pursued her everywhere. If she found a quiet moment by herself, she imagined him standing by her, a warm presence. If she played dejarik with Slasheye, she remembered the game she’d played with Kylo. Now that Kylo was safely distant, she could even imagine him sliding into her bed next to her, a solid wall of warmth. Those unexpectedly soft lips nuzzling the hair from the nape of her neck. His massive arm around her, making a shield instead of a cage. She’d feel safe. She’d turn to meet his lips with hers…

“I can see why Ren liked you,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. “It’s relaxing being around somebody who isn’t afraid all the time. I mean, no offence Slashy, even you get scared by me sometimes.”

“Maybe if you questioned your own decisions a bit more, I wouldn’t spend so much time panicking,” said Slasheye. “You have some spectacularly bad impulses.”

“I thought that was a requirement for joining the Knights,” said Rey. “Poor choices. What does Kylo do when he likes somebody?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” said Slasheye.

“I think Phasma had him on a string for a while. At least, he was always trying to impress her,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. “That never went anywhere though.”

Barra came up to the cabin. “Are we going to contact the Resistance?”

“Already have,” said Rey. “I’ve told them we’re going to Ahch-To.”

“Did they get my message about the Finalizer?” asked Barra.

“I think so. It was a really faint connection, and I couldn’t get hold of anyone in charge before the transmission failed.”

They were interrupted by a sudden shriek from the main cabin, followed by loud wailing. Slasheye clapped his hands over his ears.

“I told you not to touch that!” yelled Sim. His parents started telling him off for hitting his younger sister in a kind of whisper-shout. Whisper-shouting, whisper-screaming and arguing in general were a part of family life Rey hadn’t been exposed to before. She didn’t much like it.

“Give me the nav charts,” growled Slasheye. “We can drop them off somewhere. I mean, what would they do on Ahch-to anyway?”

They dropped the Kezedars off on a station orbiting Kitel Phard the next day. Rey hugged them all, one by one. They thanked her and the Knights graciously and effusively. Slasheye scowled and sniffed, but Rey could sense that he secretly enjoyed the attention.

 

  *        *          *



They landed on Ahch-to on a perfect morning, when the island shone like a green jewel on the ocean. Rey ran out to breathe the fresh air as soon as the ship’s ramp came down. There was the faintest of breezes carrying the salt tang of the sea and the scent of wild grasses. It could not have been more different from the night when the Knights had last landed here to attack her and Luke.

Artoo hadn’t moved from where he’d powered himself down. He looked sand-scoured and salt-washed, and moss was growing in his crevices.

“They left you behind! Artoo!” She tried to start him up but he stayed stubbornly silent.

The stairs seemed twice as high as before. “I’m not used to this any more,” gasped Rey. She went straight to Luke’s hut. It was empty and obviously abandoned. Creatures had built nests in the corners.

Slasheye leaned into the house of his old enemy and snorted. “Pitiful.”

On the way up to the peak Rey caught a whiff of carrion. She slowed down. There were jumbled black and grey shapes among the stones of the ruined causeway. Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts went past her and stopped. There wasn’t much left of their old companions; weather and the birds had seen to that.

“I don’t think they expected to die in bed of old age,” said Talks-to-Ghosts at last.

“Maybe you could bury them?” said Rey tentatively.

“I’m not touching them,” said Slasheye.

“Use the Force, you moof-milker,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. He made an angry gesture that sent the Knights’ remains dancing grotesquely into a pile.

Rey left them arguing and walked up to the Daylight Gate. It was amazing how empty the island felt. She wouldn’t have guessed that crazy, silent Luke had made such a difference simply by being there. There was nothing here now but sea and sky. Yet she was sure this was where she was meant to be. It was the will of the Force, and her own will. It told her she had unfinished business with the Jedi Temple.

The two men came up to look at the view. Talks-to-Ghost slapped a lightsaber into the palm of Rey’s hand. “Here. Morran won’t be using it.”

Rey thumbed the switch and swung the blade to get the feel of it. It was a skinny red blade, too light for Rey’s taste.

“Talks-to-Ghosts, that day in the training room I heard you say that if Luke and I joined forces, we’d destroy Snoke. Was that a prophecy?”

“It’s possible,” said Talks-to-Ghosts. “It’s why I came here, anyway. But be careful, Rey. There are things in the Force that can destroy your mind. You can’t confront them alone.” He jumped sideways suddenly, shielding himself with one hand from something invisible. “Watch it!”

Rey stared at him. He muttered, “I can’t stand crowds.”

“The temple comes and goes,” said Slasheye. “I see it too. Sometimes it’s evil.”

Rey leaned against one of the pillars of the Daylight Gate and tried to feel what was happening in the Force. For an instant the sea below her became thin and unreal, like a bad holo. “Something’s coming,” she whispered.

“Snoke!” said both men together. They stared at each other for a moment.

“Let’s go, Slashy,” said Talks-to-Ghosts, and turned to Rey. “Sorry. It’s been a pleasure. I hope to see you crowned one day on the Sun Throne, or worship you on the Throne of Blood, whichever it may be.”

“You can’t just leave me!” said Rey.

“We can. We’ll leave you some supplies though,” said Talks-to-Ghosts.

“You’re getting better with those choices, Talksy,” said Slasheye. He turned away from Rey without a word. He definitely wasn’t one for goodbyes.

Rey watched them hurry down the stairs to the ship. They weren’t completely terrible people, and she knew Slasheye felt like a heel for abandoning her. But he was no Finn. She sighed and turned back to the Daylight Gate. Meditation had never revealed its mysteries before, but there had to be a first time for everything.

*         *          *

So here she was, alone again, and worse than before. Now she could add Kylo to the list of people she missed. Kylo, with his intelligence and sarcasm, his volatile temper and smouldering eyes. Since she’d lived with the First Order, met Snoke and had come to know the other Knights, she realised what a miracle it was that Kylo had survived with any part of himself intact. Snoke had tried to mould a fearful child into a vicious tool. He’d not quite succeeded. Kylo’s furious temper had another side to it: a wild courage. She hoped it was enough to break him free of Snoke.

She missed Finn, Leia, Han, and even Luke in his funny way… When it got dark she found some bedclothes in Luke’s hut that seemed usable, and took herself up to the hollow near the foot of the Daylight Gate where he used to sleep. Lonely as she was, it was wonderful to lie under the stars and hear the sea sighing gently on the rocks far below. Snoke was coming, but he could not destroy the present.

When at last she slept, she dreamt of the temple, of course. This time it stood empty in low, late sunlight. Or maybe...were those footsteps she heard? She ran around the stone avenues, looking for someone who was always walking somewhere just out of sight. The place felt friendly, and she became convinced that Luke was there, his presence sunk into the very stones.

 _Luke?_ she called into the Force. A wash of sadness replied.

_Help me. I’m caught._

_How?_ she asked. But suddenly there was something else in the dream place, woken by their words. It searched…

Rey woke up with a gasp. The wind had risen and brought clouds with it. She made her way down to her old cave by the landing place at the foot of the steps, letting the Force guide her feet. Curled up in her chilly nest, she wished Kylo was there. That time they’d wrestled in the training room, they’d got so hot! She’d finished up on top of him and felt his heart pounding against hers. Then his groin, pushing against her and igniting a different pulse… She’d jumped away, but what if she hadn’t? She pushed a fist between her legs and ground against it slowly, imagining what might have happened. It felt unbelievably good. Even better if she remembered his hand sliding across her ribs that time she’d been injured. His lips, moving as though to drink from hers. If his hand had moved just a little, it would have covered her whole breast so easily. _Like this._ All she had to do was brush her thumb across her nipple and her whole body spasmed with pleasure.

What a wasted opportunity.

 *       *       *  

She woke again just before dawn. A ship had come out of hyperspace and the Force was vibrating around her like a plucked string. She reached out…

_Kylo! What are you doing here?_

His answer came along the Force bond, a wash of surprised delight. _You’re here! And I didn’t even have to look. But what are_ **_you_ ** _doing here?_

Rey waited for him, lightsaber in hand. His pleasure was genuine, but there was no telling whether he was happy because he’d missed her, or just pleased at reclaiming a lost possession. The Kylo she’d fantasised about might not be the man coming to meet her now. The lightsaber in Rey's hands held a message:  _I am your equal, whether we strive together or against each other._

The ship settled on the flat triangle of rock that was the only landing place. The hatch opened, sending a shaft of light into the predawn darkness. Kylo was a silhouette wreathed in steam. She would have known his shape anywhere, so tall and broad chested. The way he stood, feet well apart. The slightly jerky way he descended towards her, as though reining himself in at every moment.

He stopped at the foot of the ramp, unmasked, and cocked his head uncertainly.

“Have you joined the Knights of Ren now?”

Rey almost laughed. Of course, she was in the First Order’s black tunic, carrying one of the Knights' red lightsabers…  “This old thing? It’s a terrible lightsaber, but it’s enough to get the job done.”

“What job, Rey? Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me. I have things to do here.”

“So do I.”

“Snoke sent you?”

Kylo hesitated. “Ye—es. But I would have come anyway.”

“Whose side are you on?” asked Rey. Kylo fell silent, turning to watch her sidelong, his eyes hooded under his brows: a feral creature unused to trusting.

Somewhere to the east, the rising sun must have cleared a bank of clouds, for it became suddenly lighter. The horizon was visible all around them, a clear line of indigo. Rey could see Kylo’s face.

“Where are your loyalties?” she asked. “Choose.”

“I choose you,” he said.

Rey felt tears starting in her eyes. To be chosen like this, by him, was a lot to take in. It was a feeling she would've loved to sink into like a warm bed. But she didn’t dare. “You choose me because … why? Because you’ll have an easier life with me? You have to choose your _future,_ Kylo. Whether you’ll go forward in the Light or the Dark. Not just...choosing me because you think I’m nicer than Snoke.”

 He didn’t seem to know how to make a choice. He stood there, head lowered like an animal about to charge, his fists clenching and unclenching aimlessly. She tried to read his expression but it was difficult when he would only give her those sidelong glances, dark eyes almost hidden under his lashes.

“The Force led me here. I wanted to find you, Rey,” he said.

“That’s not the point,” she said patiently. “That’s not choosing.”

He chewed his lip and his thick brows drew into a frown. She’d seen that look on his face when they played dejarik and one of her moves thwarted him. Then he looked around, taking in the bare slopes of the island, the stone of the timeworn steps and terraces flushing to gold as they caught the first touches of early light. The morning wind came hissing across the seagrass and stirred his cloak so it flared about him.

“It looks better in daylight,” he said. “But it’s still not much. I can’t imagine how Luke could stand it, year after year.” He walked over to the lip of the rock shelf. Rey realised she was still standing holding her lightsaber ignited. She switched it off and went to stand next to him. They watched the waves tumbling and sucking at the rocks.

“Where are the others? Where’s your ship?” Kylo asked, looking around again.

“They realised Snoke was coming. As soon as they sensed that in the Force they scarpered. When were _you_ going to warn me that Snoke’s on his way here?”

Kylo’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, well you know anyway. I’m supposed to meet him, but I don’t know how long it’ll take him to get here.”

He turned away from her and walked an aimless circle around the flat triangle of land, kicking at stones. “The Force feels strong here,” he said. He seemed to be trying to change the subject.

He suddenly noticed R2D2, who was still squatting among the rocks. “Hey, is that…is that _Artoo?”_ He bent down for a closer look. “It is! Rey, this is — well, I guess you know who this is.” Rey could see him joining the dots. “He was still with the Millennium Falcon, and it took off in a hurry without him. What’s wrong with him?” He picked at some of the moss on Artoo’s dome. “He’s turning into a rock himself.”

“Er, well, there’s a strange thing,” said Rey, just as happy to change the subject. “Luke insulted him. And I did too. He powered himself off. He can do it for years, Leia says.”

“What did Luke say to him?”

“That he was a mistake. I’ve wondered about that a lot since. Artoo’s one of those droids that is different, you know? He’s a person.”

“He’s sentient, you mean?” Kylo whistled softly. “Stars, people are dense sometimes. Half the time we don’t even notice droids. It’s obvious what Artoo is once you think about it.”

“Yes. He makes his own choices. I only completed the map to Ahch-To because of him, and I don’t think Luke was happy about that. Anyway, Artoo said he’d served your family for a long time and he wasn’t about to put up with Luke’s judgements. Then he switched himself off.”

Kylo laughed. “Why, the little jerk! That’s exactly the kind of thing he would do!”

Rey walked over to crouch beside Kylo. “You know, I used the Force to turn off that kill-collar Hux put on me. I bet I could use it to open up whatever circuit Artoo closed down.”

“I’m not exactly crazy about Luke’s droid,” he said stiffly. “I’ve got some food on the ship. Let’s eat it out here.” He went back into the ship, turning once quickly as though afraid she’d make a run for it. “Wait there. I’m making flatcakes.”

“Someone’s trying to avoid a difficult conversation,” Rey muttered to the silent droid beside her.

On impulse, she decided to try to wake him. She dropped easily into meditation, then shifted her mind to the problem of Artoo’s circuits. _I am the word of skill. I am the mind that knows. I am the bridge between stars and the spark between contacts. Wake for me now, little keeper of secrets._

Rey knew circuits, and Artoo’s blend of circuitry and sentience fascinated her. It didn’t seem to take long, though she was aware Kylo had sat down beside her with two plates of food by the time she found the key to Artoo’s consciousness. She turned it on.

Both of them jumped slightly as Artoo powered up with a whirr and a buzz. His lights flashed as he tried to bring himself up to date. He twittered in alarm when he saw Kylo, and Rey patted him reassuringly. Kylo watched the droid with narrowed eyes.

“It’s been a while, Artoo,” said Rey. “A few things have happened. We’re not in immediate danger, though Snoke is due to arrive soon.” She turned to Kylo. “There’s a ridiculous amount of extra data in there. Like, a whole mountain of it, but it’s all locked off. I wonder if I can…” She let herself sink into a trance again. Working on Artoo was fascinating. There was a big, wonderful story hidden in there…

_Once upon a time…_

“Here it is. Wake up,” she breathed. Artoo gave a startled whistle and then a long coo of amazement, before becoming so still that she feared he’d found some other way to power himself off. Kylo took a flatcake off the plate between them and went back to prowling impatiently around the rock platform. Snoke’s arrival was probably weighing on his mind a lot more than whatever was going on with Artoo.

Artoo flashed his lights and started twittering, a long stream of noise. Kylo must have understood as much as Rey, because his head snapped around and he marched over to them.

“What? He was _Anakin’s_ droid? Then he was mindwiped?” Kylo was slack-jawed with amazement.

“Well, somebody tried to mindwipe him. He was clever though. He hid his memories. Until now,” said Rey.

Kylo sat in front of Artoo. “You knew Anakin Skywalker? You mean Darth Vader, right?”

Artoo gave a long sad hoot, and then the whole sorry story came out. Some of it Rey had heard from Leia, but it was obvious Kylo had never heard it, or at least, had not believed it. Artoo had drawn his own conclusions about why Anakin had turned to the dark side, and he had a lot to say about his former master’s actions once they’d parted ways. And though he hadn’t witnessed Luke’s reconciliation with his father, he’d been privy to all the conversations directly afterwards.

By the end of it Kylo was in a transport of fury. He leapt to his feet and kicked viciously at the stones around him. “My grandfather was lied to by _everyone_ he trusted. They twisted him round to believe whatever they wanted. They used his power and made him their puppet!” He stopped and went rigid, eyes shut and teeth bared. “Snoke was doing the same to me!”

“For all we know, Palpatine _is_ Snoke. Nobody ever saw his body,” said Rey.

Kylo’s fists were clenched so tight his arms were shaking. “He made me worship a lie. That’s what it’s always been with us Force users, hasn’t it? Tricked into being someone else’s tool! Come on, let’s find this Temple, or whatever we’re supposed to do here! If there’s power in there, I swear by the Force I won’t let Snoke have it.”

“We’re going to fight him?” asked Rey. But she knew the answer already. The Force told her Kylo’s instincts were right: this was where they must face Snoke. Best they gather what power they could ahead of that time, whenever it might be.

Kylo had already started up the steps of the island at a run. Rey followed close behind him. It was a bright day, and the Force lent wings to their feet as they ran up towards the skyline. Only towers of cloud crowned it now, but surely there must be a way to call up the real thing.

 

 


	22. A Star to Every Wandering Bark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo understands that Rey will never stay with him unless he makes a choice. It's not enough to choose her. Who wouldn't choose a smart, courageous, beautiful girl like her? But he has to choose who he will be from now on. Will he serve the Light or the Dark?
> 
> And yes, finally some smut in this slowest of slow-burn stories.
> 
> * * *

Once they reached the top of the island, their next move was no more obvious than before. Kylo and Rey wandered about examining the tumbled stones of the causeway to nowhere. The wariness between them dissipated as they tried to fit together their guesses about the place. They read the inscriptions as best they could. Rey tried saying them aloud. The Daylight Gate remained stubbornly ordinary, just two broken pillars framing a view of the sea and sky. Rey felt uncomfortable searching Luke’s hut for clues, but Kylo had no such compunction, turning over the dusty mattress and sweeping his hands impatiently over the meagre shelves of his old mentor’s possessions. Nothing.

They sat together and meditated. Kylo knew plenty of different meditation techniques and as the day went on, Rey was happy about that, if nothing else. She’d found her own way to meditate, but it was good to have some formal training. But by late afternoon she was thoroughly bored by it, and hungry.

The seabird population had exploded with Luke gone. Rey left Kylo meditating on the peak and went to plunder their nests. She felt sorry for the birds, but climbing the cliffs of Ahch-to was one of her favourite things to do. She fried up the eggs in Luke’s pan and they ate them sitting against the pillars of the Daylight Gate. The sun was setting behind them and the ruins cast long fingers of shadow over the mauve-coloured sea.

Kylo’s mood turned serious. Rey watched his long profile. His lips were loosened into a soft pout. She stifled an urge to touch them and let him follow his own  thoughts.

“That dream you have,” he began at last. “The one about being caught in the machine. It’s a symbol. It’s life in the First Order. It’s life under Snoke.”

“Yes, I figured that out,” said Rey.

“That dream is horrible. But to me, it’s already happened,” said Kylo hesitantly. He swallowed and shot her a glance as though wondering whether to trust her. “The dreams with you on the altar are different. One time when I saw you there, you had a furnace inside. And you do.”

“I’m just me, Kylo. Don’t make me into a symbol.”

“No, listen,” he said, turning to her. His voice was suddenly urgent. “You burn out everything that is a lie. You’re like the sun to me, Rey. I’ve been in the dark too long.”

Rey nodded slowly, holding his gaze with hers. He looked so lost. She wasn’t sure she could ever find the words to guide him out of that dark. She began, “When I was a child on Jakku my hold-family ran a smelter, like I told you. They’d pour in the junk and stone, and fire it up. You could stare in through a peephole. I always imagined the seven Corellian hells in that furnace. Afterwards you had the pure metal and the dross…”

“And which one am I?” asked Kylo. He kept his voice light, but there was the very thin edge of a tremor in it, and he would not look at her. When she did not answer he stood up, taking stones he’d gather in his hand and hurling them out to sea.

Rey sighed. He was her penitent knight, tall and proud and yet ready to humble himself before her. Who was she, to break him on her word? She wanted so badly to put her arms around him and lend him her strength. But that would never do. She couldn’t carry him where he needed to go.

“You’re not the dross, Kylo,” she began. She didn’t know what came next. She got up so she wasn’t speaking up to his height. “I don’t know what you are.”

He nodded, and now his eyes were fixed on hers. So dark and deep she could fall into them. “Do you forgive me?”

She walked over to him. Every step an unreal distance. She took his hands in hers. “I’m not the one you have to beg forgiveness,” said Rey.

“I can’t undo the past,” he said hoarsely. “What’s done is done. I suffer for it every day. All I can do is try to move forward. Be my guide, Rey. You’ve always made your own choices, and look at you!” He smiled down at her with an expression Rey had never seen before, fond and proud. It made her weak at the knees.

“Help me then! What I have to do, I can’t do it alone, Kylo.” She knew it, with all the certainty the Force could give her.

“What do you need to do?”

Could she trust him? She squeezed his hands and looked up into his face, trying to read him.  His mouth was a little lopsided, so one side of his face countered the expression on the other side. Han’s face had been the same, but Han hadn’t had those full lips. She watched Kylo wet them with his tongue, readying himself to speak. But he said nothing. Just looked at her with those strange, slanted eyes. Eyes that should have been humorous but were instead so sad.

“I think I need to rescue Luke. Maybe everything about the dream-place is a symbol. But words give it power. That’s why Luke won’t speak. I searched for him in the dream last night, and spoke to him. He answered, but that woke the….the whatever it is in there.”

Kylo nodded, listening intently. His thumbs were straying over her hands, caressing them without seeming to know he was doing it. Rey swallowed, trying to concentrate.

“I know you hate him Kylo, but he’s so sad. He was never meant to be alone all this time. It’s horrible for him. It’s like he’s stuck in that place; he’s turning into the stones and the ground, and he hates it.”

“Luke liked people. A lot,” said Kylo. “It’s one of the things that I couldn’t understand about him. Or him about me. I wasn’t….I didn’t like groups. He made it look so easy, being likeable and approachable while also being this powerful, mysterious Jedi master.” Kylo’s face twisted with an old jealousy, and then he shook his head. “That was just his way, I guess. It came naturally to him.”

“Talks-to-Ghosts told me if Luke and I worked together we would destroy them — I think he meant destroy Snoke and the First Order as well as the Knights of Ren. Could that be true?”

“It could well be. He had one of the most powerful connections with the Force of anybody I’ve ever met. If he’d had the strength to manage it, he’d have been formidable.”

“It destroyed him, didn’t it?” said Rey. “But he seemed calmer on the journey here. Most of what he said made sense.”

“Let’s hope Talks-to-Ghosts was right for once. I want to see Snoke crushed. I wish we knew when he was getting here,” said Kylo.

“Leia’s probably on her way here too. At least, I told her I was coming back to Ahch-to,” said Rey. Kylo stiffened and his fingers stopped their gentle stroking of her hands. She pulled them loose and gripped his arms instead. “So make her proud! There’s no _sorry_ you can say to her that will be enough. But you can act.”

“I’m trying! I’m helping you, aren’t I? But she’d never forgive me. I’ve got so much blood on my hands.” His eyebrows were pulled up into tortured peaks. If Rey didn’t find the right words, he’d fall into that pain and never come out. Or if he came out, it would be with his lightsaber swinging. When a heart wouldn’t be healed, it could be hardened with rage. Men fell into that so easily, so often.

“Did Han forgive you?”

Kylo froze for a moment, remembering. Low and husky he said at last, “Yes. Yes, he did. It doesn’t make me feel any better though. It makes me nothing. I didn’t deserve his forgiveness.”

“You survived. You’re still here, you’re still you. More than anything, Leia would want a son who survived. Your life... you have been through the refiner’s fire. So now make yourself into whatever you will, Kylo. The choice is yours.”

She reached up and touched a tear trembling on the end of his long lashes, traced her finger down his face to let the tears follow after. Kylo caught his breath in a gasp and pulled her almost roughly  into his arms.

She tried to say his name, to touch his face, but before she could, his lips were  on hers, as hungry for her warmth as she was for his. She opened her mouth and pressed her tongue against his. It  tasted of the sea air. No sweet lover, him. She wanted, absurdly, to lick the salt away. She tried, running her tongue over his. His arms tightened around her and she pulled herself even closer to him as though she could mould herself into part of him.

He ran his tongue under the arch of her mouth, sending a shiver down her spine, then sucked on her tongue until she had to pull back, gasping for breath. His hands were kneading her shoulders, and then they slid lower to  squeeze her ass. She arched her back at the sensation, pushing herself into him. There was that hard mound again, pulsing against the softness of her stomach. It teased her so she stood on tiptoe, trying to raise herself up. Kylo understood immediately. He cupped his hands under her and lifted until  she could wrap her legs around his hips. The feel of his cock throbbing against her groin was a relief and a torment.

Kylo’s gaze travelled up and down as though he couldn’t believe in the reality of the slender body he held in his arms. Rey’s nipples stood up at his attention. The touch of her clothes felt unbearable against their sensitive tips. Kylo’s eyes seemed as if they could burn her tunic off, and right now that would be no bad thing.

His grip on her  tightened, and he walked them away from the edge of the cliff. In one of the grassy hollows where a stone had fallen from its place, he knelt down with her still in his arms. She moved to sit astride him. One hand slid up under her tunic, brushing over her ribs.

“Remember that time I healed you? I wanted to…” His thumb traced slowly across the side of her breast, and he looked at her, half-smiling. His eyes shone. From this angle they were exquisite: wing-shaped and fledged with marvellously long lashes.

“Do it. Do it now,” she said hoarsely.

His hand moved all the way across her breast, soft and then harder, closing his fingertips over her nipples and drawing them out into points. Rey gasped. Kylo pulled up the hem of her tunic with his other hand and tried to pull it over her head. She got tangled in it, finally getting out of it with an undignified wriggle. They both laughed. Kylo pulled her down to lie next to him, his hands sliding all over her body as he watched her.

“You too,” she said, pushing him away and trying to find the fastenings to his tunic. Undressing him proved to be much more of an operation. He was armoured as well as clothed.

“How can you wear this all the time?” she said, and swore under her breath. Eventually she gave up and let him remove his bindings, kissing his skin as he exposed it. His arms, with their maps of vein and muscle, and the tender place inside his elbow that made him gasp. His collarbones. The scattered wiry hairs on his chest fascinated her, as she had no such thing on her body. She rubbed her cheek against his chest hairs  and walked her fingers down the trail they made to his waist. Kylo made a soft sound in the back of his throat. He pushed her off, took his boots off with a grunt of effort and slid off his pants.

“The love songs always make it sound more graceful,” said Rey, pulling off her own pants.

“How many love songs have you heard?” he said, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“Loads. Mostly sung by very old women who cackle at the end of it and say none of it’s true.”

“None of it’s true,” he agreed. “Except for you. You’re the sun among lesser stars.” He pounced on her, but gently, laying her flat so he could admire her.. His hand came to rest  between her legs, rubbing gently at the soft hair curling there. Rey shuddered with pleasure.

“Have you, uh, done this before?” he asked.

She shook her head. He nodded, but didn’t offer any details about his own history. She reached out a hand to touch his waist, and then moved to touch his cock, which she could see straining up towards his stomach as he leaned over her. The skin was what she imagined velvet must feel like:  unexpectedly soft and luxurious to the touch. It trembled under her as she ran her palm over his shaft. Now it was Kylo’s turn to shudder with pleasure.

He moved his fingers between her legs and felt inwards. She tensed for a second, but then he found her clit and began to rub it, slowly working his fingers in deeper as he did so.

“Does this feel good?,” he asked.

“Yes. I think..." she said uncertainly. It felt so strange to trust somebody else’s  touch there. She was slick with wetness that might be blood, or might not, and warm with a pain that was also pleasure. And that insistent pulse, hammering out its demands for something she’d never had before.

She sat up and moved to sit astride him again, rather gingerly in case it hurt. It didn’t, and now her face was on a level with his. She wrapped her arms around him, running her hands over the broad expanse of his back before reaching up to push his hair back so the starlight shone in his eyes. They kissed again, and she felt his cock pushing against her stomach.

“Kneel up,” said Kylo, putting his hands under her butt cheeks to show her what he meant. Now she was raised up, the tip of his cock butted against the yearning spot between her legs. He kneaded her with alternate hands so she caught his rhythm, rocking her hips from side to side and slowly letting herself down onto him. He guided himself into her with one hand.

Rey caught her breath. It felt strange. And then it felt okay. Anatomy wasn’t something Rey knew much about, but he was inside of her, and somehow there was room. She let herself down cautiously a little more, and he kept going in deeper, filling her up. She wondered how far he could go. And then he was all the way in. What she felt then inside her demanded movements that she’d never imagined doing with another person.  Her whole body jerked and shook, hungry for the pleasure just out of reach somewhere deep inside. More and more, she wanted.

Kylo’s hot mouth covered hers, and he thrust his hips to grind against her. Each thrust carried her up higher and higher. He cried out wordlessly and relaxed under her in one long shuddering breath, holding her so tight it almost hurt. She bore down on his pubic bone and a moment later her whole body exploded in a starburst of pleasure. And more than pleasure: for an endless moment the turning world below and the stars above seemed to pause and tremble on the verge of some revelation. She was part of it, and Kylo was, all and everything together.

The feeling ebbed away. She groaned and let herself relax against Kylo’s solid bulk. They were both breathing heavily and the cool fingers of the night breeze were welcome on their sweaty skin.

They lay together in silence, face to face, mapping each other’s bodies with their hands. Any word they spoke could only lead to the future, and neither of them wanted to leave the perfection of the present. Their breathing slowed and after a while the chill forced them to dress again. Eventually Rey fetched Luke’s bedding from his hut. They lay together under the stars until they fell asleep.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title's from this sonnet by Shakespeare which is exquisite, if you don't know it. I liked the idea of Kylo seeing Rey as the guide to his conscience, since he trusts himself so little:
> 
> SONNET 116  
> Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
> Admit impediments. Love is not love  
> Which alters when it alteration finds,  
> Or bends with the remover to remove:  
> O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,  
> That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;  
> It is the star to every wandering bark,  
> Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  
> Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
> Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
> Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
> But bears it out even to the edge of doom.  
> If this be error and upon me proved,  
> I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 
> 
>  
> 
> Rey and Kylo's love hasn't been tested by time, and who knows if they will "bear it out even to the edge of doom", but she will have to be the one who 'looks on tempests, and is never shaken' with Kylo, and she is his guiding star and the leader of his conscience, 'the star to every wandering bark.' (which is a ship, for those of you who have this as a second language).


	23. Au Fond du Temple Sant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find a way through to the First Jedi Temple
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the mood in the beginning of this chapter, listen to Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel" 
> 
> It is a wordless piece of music filled with exactly the kind of tenderness and serenity I wanted to describe, and to me it speaks of wisdom and acceptance and fragile hope.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZe3mXlnfNc
> 
> I also listened to this a lot (obviously!): Au Fond du Temple Sant, from Bizet's "Pearl Fishers"
> 
> https://archive.org/details/LesPecheursDePerlesAuFondDuTempleSaint
> 
> There’s nothing about the opera that relates to this story except the way this music conveys the men’s reverence for the amazing, beautiful, powerful priestess they are in love with, and it has these lines (which sound better in French!)
> 
> The prostrate crowd  
> looks at her amazed  
> and murmurs under its breath:  
> look, this is the goddess  
> looming up in the shadow  
> and holding out her arms to us.
> 
> I imagined the First Jedi Temple to be a lot like Giorgio de Chirico's disturbing, empty cities:
> 
> http://www.galleryintell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Giorgio-de-Chirico_cropped.jpg
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

Kylo lay back. A thousand thousand stars blazed above him. They had never been as beautiful before. The planet turned beneath him and the faint roar of the sea floated up from far below, making slow words, the long thoughts of the world murmured aloud. He could feel the life in his body, a deep pulse running through him. How could he have spent so long in the durasteel bellies of the First Order’s ships?

Rey sighed and stirred beside him, clutching her arms around herself. She looked cold. He gathered her up, sitting to cup her in the curve of his body. She woke briefly, starlight glinting in her eyes. A wondering look. He smoothed back soft wisps of her hair.

“Is it really you?” she mumbled, smiling faintly and fell back asleep. There was no wrinkle on her brow. After all the betrayals she’d seen in her young life, to have such trust.

He sat and reached into the night, extending his Force senses like antennae. The world was not without its dangers, after all.  He could find no sign of the Jedi Temple. Nothing moved in the Force as far as he could reach, but in the sky above he sensed something. An ominous bulge as though something there might crack and give way. Snoke was still in hyperspace, but not for much longer.

Rey began to dream. The darkness around them flickered, and Kylo caught his breath. The walls and towers rose around them, bathed in a ghostly sunlight. The crowd shimmered in and out of existence, their voices faint as the cries of sea-wings or the distant waves. Chanting, singing, baying for blood, they changed from moment to moment.

Could he pick her up without waking her?

With the help of the Force, he could. He rose up in one smooth movement.

“Sleep, sweet one. Sleep, my beauty,” he whispered softly, and she lay across his arms just as she had when he left Takodana. But this was abandonment freely given, not forced on her by an act of his will.

Kylo saw the broken stones of the hilltop smooth themselves, catching an unreal sunlight on their newly-polished surfaces. The pathway to the Daylight Gate formed a causeway past the pillars and out over the sea, which had vanished behind the First Jedi Temple. Its towers gleamed, long narrow flags on every turret unfurling in a breeze he couldn’t feel.

“Sleep, my queen, my sun,” he whispered, and stepped out along the causeway. An unseen crowd roared, and then there was silence. The island of Ahch-to dropped away and Kylo stood holding Rey in a sunlit plaza. They were alone.

Rey woke as the sun touched her face, flailing out of his arms and onto her feet. He pulled her into an embrace, standing rigid as he waited to see whether the temple would dissolve around them, leaving them to plummet into the sea. But the Temple stayed solid. Rey looked up at it and gasped.

“We’re really here! We did it!” She turned around, looking at the long arcades of arches, the peaked roofs, the curlicued writing carved on the walls. The wide plaza and the altar at its centre.

“You figured it out!” she said, looking up at him with a radiant smile.

“Yes. That’s why Snoke wanted us. One to walk and one to dream, and both to open the way for him. It’d be typical of him to know more than he told me.”

“Do you think he can follow us?”

They looked behind them. The causeway led back to the island, which was now in daylight although they’d left at night. The path back down to the landing looked new and tidy.

“Maybe,” he said. He took her hand. “So, we find Luke now?” He was whispering. “Or figure out what this Temple is?”

“I want to find Luke,” she said. “I don’t think we need to whisper. It’s not noise that wakes whatever’s here. It’s, I don’t know, our presence. Being present.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Words pull us into ourselves.” She paused, thinking. “I realised something when we were meditating together before, trying to get in here. The way you were trained, you’re supposed to lose yourself in silence. You become one with the Force. But I was never trained at all. When I want to do things, I use words to focus me.”

As they talked they wandered from the centre of the causeway into one of the colonnades at the side of the central plaza. In its shade they felt less exposed with their black clothes against the white stones.

Rey had the serene look of deep thought. On her face it was unutterably lovely, and Kylo could have stared at her all day. “Maybe I was wrong before. Saying words gives power to whatever is here. Words give _us_ power,” said Rey. “Maybe Luke’s mistake was to lose himself in the Force when he came here.”

“Okay,” said Kylo, taking Rey’s hand. “My turn to make a guess about this place, then. It took two of us to come in here. Snoke didn’t tell me that much about Force bonds, but I do know that the two of us together should be stronger than one. There were Force-bonded pairs in history who overcame things that nobody else could defeat,” said Kylo.

“I think we’ve barely tested what our bond can do,” Rey said. “I guess we’ll find out. Another thing: when I was here in my dreams, it sometimes felt like Luke was here too. He’d become part of the place. I can’t feel him now, though.”

They stood looking around them. Kylo was distracted by the feel of her hand, small and neatly curled into his palm.

“I can feel him,” said Kylo, surprising himself. Rey gave him a quizzical look. “I knew him longer than you. Listen.”

They listened, both in the Force and with their ears. After a moment they both felt it: a low, steady vibration.

“That way,” said Kylo, and pointed down a stone avenue to the left of the altar.

“How do you know?”

“Because I have big ears. Obviously,” he said, and was rewarded by the sight of Rey startled into sudden laughter, eyes sparkling. She clapped her hand over her mouth. Nothing stirred, however, and they walked over in the direction he’d indicated. The temple, it seemed, was an outdoor place. They gave the altar a wide berth. Kylo avoided looking at it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw stains appear for an instant on the clean white stones. Ugly reddish brown. Beside him Rey checked her pace for a moment and then sped up to leave it behind.

The noise was louder once they’d entered the avenue. Two long rows of columns flanked them, stretching into the distance. At the end they could see a building that looked different to the others. Still made of the same stone and built with the same graceful arches, it also had stairs and pipes. It resembled a factory, though a strangely decorative one. A small plume of smoke, wispy and white, drifted from one of its towers.

“I think it’s the machine. The thing in our dreams that takes us up and makes us part of it. This is a version of it, anyway,” said Rey. She swallowed twice, convulsively, then squared her shoulders. Her chin was up. Of all the things to love about her, this was one: he loved the way she faced danger. He hoped they would get enough time together for him to learn them all.

As they walked down the avenue together, Kylo became aware of darkness flickering at the edge of his vision. He could not see it directly, yet it tore at the edges of his awareness. The buildings around them gaped momentarily with holes. Rey whipped her head around and he guessed she was trying to get a clear look at what was happening too. A paving stone would vanish under their feet, only to reappear under their direct attention.

Rey cocked her elbows, lowered her head and lengthened her stride. Kylo kept pace beside her. The only sound was their footsteps echoing on the pavement.

As they approached the building, tendrils of thought began to curl around them. At first Kylo thought it was Rey talking to him along the Force bond. _Why am I dragging this emotional wreck along with me? He’ll be useless in a fight. He’ll leave me to face it alone_ ….

She must have heard things too, for she gave him an outraged look. “Did you just—?”

“What?” He caught her thought: something spiteful he’d never said to her. “No, I didn’t. Did you just call me an emotional wreck?”

“No,” she said irritably. “I think we’re being played. Don’t listen.”

He nodded, though it was hard to ignore something that came to him through the Force like that. It was remarkably like Snoke’s whisperings, come to think of it. He wondered how many of the things Snoke had protected him from were suggestions he’d put there himself. He said as much to Rey and she gave a sharp jerk of her chin as though it were obvious.

“He suggested it was my fault Han died. Me resisting your mind probe was proof that you needed to kill him, or you wouldn’t be able to defeat me. Nice move, huh?”

“Dick,” muttered Kylo. “But that’s not Snoke ahead of us. I’d know.”

The Force whisperings grew stronger as they approached the building. Kylo wanted to reach for the Force and call on the power it had always given him. But when he tried, it sucked at him and he reeled, feeling both his memory and his will darken. Rey tightened her grip on his hand and stood in front of him, eyes wide.

“Kylo! Kylo! Kylo! Look at me! What is my name?”

He stared at her blankly. There was empty space inside him where her name should be.

“My name. _My name!”_

She held him in her desperate gaze, and it came to him. “Your name is Rey.”

She gave a shuddering breath, then took his chin in her hands. “What is the Force bond?”

He looked into her luminous hazel eyes, and then past them into the Force bond they had knotted together themselves in pain and pleasure. He opened himself to it and felt her do the same. The connection between them vibrated with latent power. It embraced them, held them in a circle of calm. Rey reached up on tiptoe to kiss him, slowly and almost reverently. It felt like drinking pure Force energy from her lips.

“You’re my shield and my sunlight,” he whispered.

“You’re my storm on the sea,” she replied.

The sucking emptiness around them loosened its grip.

“Hold me in this bond, and I will do the same. Nobody can stand against us,” he said.

She gave him an unexpectedly wolfish grin, that snarl-smile he’d so admired when they played dejarik. He felt the same expression on his own face. Together they turned their faces to the mysterious building at the end of the avenue. She swung her hand in his and chanted,

_“I am the point of a weapon_

_Who pours forth combat._

_I am the blade that breaks all fear._

_I am the door and the key._

_I am the arch and the sky between._

_I, the fire-handed,_

_I, the high-hearted."_

Not loud, but still a defiant call in this place that fed, he was sure, on one’s sense of self.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re going to attract attention.”

“I told you. I don’t know another way to focus the Force. And whatever we’re looking for, wouldn’t we deal with it sooner if it came looking for us?

He laughed at the sheer effrontery of it. “I thought I was the impatient one!”

The road and the colonnades seemed to tighten and swirl around them, funnelling them towards the building. But they refused to be hurried. As they reached the arched entranceway, a spinning, swarming blackness pulled them forwards. Kylo focused only on the girl at his side, solid and real and warm. He felt her attention on him like an arm around his shoulder, strong and confiding. _I know you._ Holding him safe from the hungry sucking evil surrounding them.

_And I know you, my beloved._

They stepped into the dark interior. It hummed and boomed with movement they could not see.

Kylo turned around and around, looking up to high railed galleries above them and corridors stretching into the distance. There were stairs and pipes, a profusion of them, though where they led or what they did was difficult to make out.

 _“_ What is this place?” Rey asked.

“I think it’s a symbol, not a real place,” Kylo said.

“I bet there’s a place for us in here somewhere. A slot where we fit perfectly,” said Rey, and as soon as she said it he could feel it drawing him in. The place where he could be bound in a cog, to turn forever. Without the bond to Rey, he might have let his feet take him there.

“It’s like the First Order is a shadow of this. All that conformity, everyone tied to their place in the structure, that endless hunger for power…” he said.

“Yeah, I feel that too,” said Rey. Kylo stumbled for a moment. He’d reached out for an instant to test the power around them, and something tried to seize him as soon as he lost his focus on their Force bond. Rey wrapped her arms around him and he regained his balance.

“I won’t do that again. Come on, let’s find what this place is. Or find Luke,” he said.

They wandered through the dim, lofty interiors. Sometimes there were signs of battle: flame-scarred walls, dropped armour from a dozen periods in history. There were chutes and ladders and finally at the heart of it all, a high chamber wreathed in steam filled with gigantic pistons that boomed and pounded. They stood holding hands, dwarfed by it. None of it made any sense.

“If it’s a symbol, it stands for a machine. I know machines,” said Rey, speaking into his ear to be heard.  “They make things. They do things. What does this place make or do?” She stared at the engine room, then shook her head in frustration. “We need to find Luke. He must know.”

“What’s the good of that if he can’t talk?” shouted Kylo.

“He’ll bloody well talk when I get hold of him,” Rey yelled. Through the bond he understood how she was put out of temper by a machine she couldn’t understand. He pulled her away and they retreated down another corridor.

They came to a hall full of clockwork, endless cogs turning in lockstep. Rey watched it, mesmerised. Kylo shook her and turned her to face him when he sensed her getting sucked in by the hypnotic motion.

She shook herself and said, “The Force is living. This is a machine. A dead thing. What if it was made to harness the Force? And it’s gone on doing that, even with everybody gone?” said Rey. “It grabs Force-users when it can…”

“Somebody blasted it off the island and out of Time to stop it doing that,” Kylo guessed. “But Snoke knew about it…”

“He still couldn’t get in. He needed us.”

“Maybe. Or it’s just a good story that happens to fit the facts. And we don’t have enough facts.”

A thin shaft of light caught Kylo’s attention over Rey’s shoulder. He was sure it hadn’t been there a moment ago. With it came a sense of presence. Luke. He jerked his chin in that direction. Rey felt it in the Force bond anyway. She nodded as if it confirmed her guess. “Everything is related,” she said.

They set off, faster now. Rey had to trot to keep up with Kylo’s long lope, but she didn’t seem to mind. A tall narrow corridor led them to another clockwork room.

Luke was there.

He was tied to a great gear in the centre of some complex machine. His eyes were closed and he gave no sign he was aware of them. Kylo was shaken by how he’d aged. The salt and pepper beard, the deep bags under his eyes, the unkempt hair. He’d not seen them so clearly during their night battle on Ahch-to. Finding him like this, Kylo couldn’t remember why he’d hated him so much.

“That’s not his real body,” hissed Rey. “He looks exactly the same as when I last saw him, so he can’t have been stuck on that wheel for months.”

“Well it’s all we’ve got, so let’s rescue it,” said Kylo, exasperated. “This whole thing is turning into such a kriffing hall-of-mirrors drama.”

“No! It’s probably a trap! Fly-paper for Force-users. It draws them in and then they’re stuck.”

Kylo snorted. “Now I really hate this place.” He looked up at the figure of Luke in its endless slow turn. He risked reaching out with his Force senses one more time, holding tightly onto Rey as he did it. To his surprise, he became aware that Luke really was there, or somewhere nearby. A shadow of grief and misery stirred itself awake and regarded Kylo with amazement.

_You’re the last person I would have expected._

“He _is_ here! Maybe that body’s a symbol, but he’s definitely here!”

“I can sense him too!” said Rey excitedly. “I’ll call him!” She paused for a moment. “Hold me. Hold me tight in the bond. I’ll have to reach past myself and past you. Something could grab me when I do that.”

He could feel it too, some hungry thing waiting for them to make a false move. What was this place, that was at once a senseless machine yet filled with living malevolence? He took Rey’s hands in his, and leaned down and kissed her. She opened her mouth hungrily to the passion and Force energy in him.

“Once wasn’t really enough,” he said when she pulled away. “Don’t go.”

“Once wasn’t nearly enough. Don’t let me go,” she said, then closed her eyes the better to sense Luke’s presence. Kylo could feel it, soaked into the stone walls around them and diffused through the air. But his job was to anchor Rey. He watched her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks and her lips move as she searched for the words she needed. “Anchor me,” she murmured. “Those are good words.”

_My heart is well-founded_

_Worthy to ride the roughest seas_

_I’ll make of my heartstrings a basket_

_Close-woven, watertight_

_A safe net, you’ll see…._

She broke off and laughed. “That’s an awful rhyme! But I can do this, I know!” Her eyes flashed at the challenge. Kylo didn’t need more reasons to love her, but this was another one: laughing despite this terrible place.

“Only because you anchor me,” she said, still smiling. He smiled back. Her trust felt so good.

Whether it was her words, or her laughter, or the fond smile between them, he could feel Luke’s presence drawing near. Warming its hands over the fire they made with their love.

“It’s okay, you can come out,” said Rey. “We’re making it safe. We’re here, we’re near, you need have no fear…” She laughed again. “No, seriously…..” She settled down to concentrate.

It was serious now. Luke was trying to bring back his dispersed self, and something contended with them to steal him away. Rey bared her teeth, fighting it. Kylo held her, chanting her name in his mind in case she risked too much and lost herself.

_Here is where we call you,_

_Our hands linked_

_Our our arms entwined_

_Our hearts cupped brimful_

_This is how we hold you._

And simple as that, it was done. Where there had been just a body bound on a wheel, there was a mind and a heart too. Luke opened his eyes and raised his head, looking around in bewilderment. Rey and Kylo both drew their lightsabers and jumped up to free him, cutting through his bonds with quick strokes, half expecting to be trapped themselves. But nothing caught them, and together they took him in their arms and brought him down. He looked from one to the other. Still speechless, but for a different reason. Finally he said, “Are you….? What happened?”

Kylo kept concentrating on the bond that kept them safe and let Rey tell the story, which ran something like “Kylo kidnapped me and took me back to the Finalizer and we hated each other and now we don’t.”

Luke was still bewildered. “I don’t sense the Dark in you,” he said, looking at Rey’s black tunic and red lightsaber and making the same mistake Kylo had. He turned to Kylo and paused for a beat. “Or you either.”

“Oh I just grabbed any old thing that happened to be in the wardrobe,” said Kylo. Rey stifled a laugh.

Luke looked around at where they were in the room full of gears. “So I’m still in the Temple.”

“This is the temple? We thought it was the altar thing,” said Rey. Kylo felt the Force energy around them stiffen at the mention of the altar, and memories of human sacrifice flashed into his mind. He tightened his grip on the Force bond. Rey scooped her arm around Luke.

“No, this is it,” said Luke sadly. “I found the holocrons that talked about it. A long time ago, somebody found a way to put the Force in one place to serve them. They called it the  First Jedi Temple, but they twisted the first principles of the Force. They threw the Light and Dark out of balance, and said that it was outdated dogma. The Force should serve the Light only, they said.

“This thing took on the nature of a machine. Over time different factions took control of it, both for the Light and the Dark. Now it’s running on its own. It’ll eat anyone alive that comes to it. It’ll take their minds if it can, and use their Force.

“Somebody tried to destroy it, but they only ended up sending it here. Since then, whenever the Sith or the Jedi have gained control of the galaxy, it’s connected to whoever has control here.”

“How come I didn’t read this in any history?” asked Kylo.

“Because whoever takes this place goes mad. They throw the balance one way or the other, but then they’re in no state to do anything. Still, they leave the galaxy tilting to the Light or the Dark. What happens in history is a downstream effect.”

“Snoke’s on his way here,” said Kylo. “He thinks he can control it next.”

“Snoke!” said Luke, and his eyes hardened. He gave Kylo a searching look. Kylo knew it well. Luke had always wondered how much to trust him. “Snoke has some way of drawing power from this place already. I’m sure he’s been plotting to get more for years. He doesn’t have much Force power of his own, I think. Which is why he was using yours.”

“I hate the Force sometimes,” Kylo said shortly.

“You wouldn’t, if it was left alone to do what it’s supposed to do,” said Luke. “But it’s getting sucked in here and put to work. It should be out in the Galaxy, binding things together.”

“Let’s destroy this place properly!” said Rey fiercely. “There’s three of us. How powerful would we be if we work together?”

Luke gave Rey an approving look. “Let’s not do it here though, or we’ll find ourselves in mid-air five hundred metres above the sea,” he said.

Kylo grinned. The Force bond hummed between them, crackling with potential. Hand in hand, they raced back through the Temple. Luke guided them with his eyes closed because the other ways, he explained, didn’t work.

Outside they found the streets awash with phantom crowds that switched between rabid mobs and peaceful gatherings. The pavement twisted queasily under their feet. The last stretch of causeway to the tip of the island stretched like a racetrack and they ran as if their lives depended on it. The Daylight Gate lifted its two pillars like the arms of a victor until they ran through it, then shrank to the broken ruin they recognised.

It was a morning of grey cloud, and the hilltop was not empty. Snoke and Leia stood face to face amid a scatter of bodies in Resistance and First Order armour. They seemed to be in a standoff: Leia held a blaster trained on Snoke, and his emaciated form towered over her, his hand raised in a threatening gesture. They  both turned in shock. From their point of view, Kylo and the others must have appeared out of thin air.

His mother staggered at the sight of him and Kylo felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. Snoke seized on the moment and snatched the blaster out of her hand. Leia jumped out of reach.

Snoke’s small eyes flicked from one to the other, trying to weigh up the situation between them. He raised his other hand towards Luke and Rey, just as he had taught Kylo to do. They stood as though stunned or frozen in place. Then he addressed Kylo alone. “So. I wondered where you were, my boy. Come here.”

Kylo could not move. His Master stood before him in the flesh. He had never resisted him before. He wanted to, but such power….whether he moved his own feet or not, Snoke would draw him into his grasp regardless.

“Do you want me to kill her for you?” asked Snoke. His tone sounded friendly. Eager to help Kylo dispose of a problem.

Leia’s eyes widened and her whole face blazed defiance. Kylo felt Force energy pulsing out of her., wayward and sudden as ever. It must have broken Snoke’s hold on her, for she cleared the distance between herself and Kylo in a rush, taking him in her arms. “Ben, no!”

She was so small, her face pressed against his chest. Kylo put a tentative hand on her head. When had she got all those grey hairs?

Rey and Luke recovered their power of movement as Snoke advanced on them all. Rey slapped her lightsaber into Luke’s hand. “Keep him busy,” she muttered. Kylo shot him a glance. Luke the old man was gone, and Luke the seasoned warrior was back. The lightsaber hummed eagerly in his hand, and he swept it through the air, fixing Snoke with a fathomless gaze.

Rey’s arms took Kylo and Leia in a fierce embrace. “With me, now! Both of you. Lend me your strength. If we take the temple down, Snoke loses his power.”

The temple was invisible but now they knew exactly how to tune in to its otherworld presence. Kylo ignored Snoke and Luke as he reached  for the Force bond. Rey was cheek to cheek with Leia, drawing out the Force energy Leia had never learned to control herself. Then Kylo felt Luke take his other hand, still keeping Snoke at bay with the lightsaber. There was a jolt of power between Leia and Luke.

Rey grinned wildly up at Kylo, then turned and flung her arm out pointing back the way they had come.

_I am the word of skill_

_I am the blade of thought_

_I am the word of unmaking_

_The roots of trees unseat the towers_

_The wild grasses work their will_

_Clouds rise, stars fall_

_The engines are silenced_

_Here where the sea speaks_

_And the land hears_

_And the sky listens_

_And the Force speaks:_

_A word never finished_

Kylo felt the sea and sky crack for a moment. The First Jedi Temple appeared for a moment, fully present  in the real world. Then it broke with a roar, falling to rubble and broken stones. The cliff shook under their feet and he saw water spouting up far out to sea as the temple and the ground it had stood on collapsed into it. The wind carried away the rising dust and Kylo could see a long tongue of tumbled rocks  where there had only been water.

The Force moved around them in a great gasp and then drained away, spreading loose and easy over this world and all the others.

Snoke stood behind them with his bony arms wrapped around himself, all power drained out of him. He gave Rey a flat stare of hatred. “I will not bow my head to you.”

She snorted. “I wouldn’t accept you if you did.”

Leia picked up her blaster from where she’d dropped it and aimed it at Snoke. He drew his robes around him and stalked scornfully past her to the edge of the cliff. There he paused for a moment, but in the end he couldn’t bear to even look at them, much less speak. One long step more and the wind took him and flung him to the rocks far below.

The four of them stood together, Kylo with an arm around his mother and another around his beloved. Seabirds flew out to inspect the newly-formed land below them. They made white flecks against the dark slanting curtains of rain advancing towards them across the sea.

“Let’s go home,” said Leia in her tired, husky voice.

Home? Where was home? He looked down at Rey and she smiled at him.

It would be all right. Wherever they went, it would be all right.

  
  



End file.
